I Thought I Was Over That

People generally work on the things they don’t like about themselves, trying to change, fix or get rid of certain aspects of their behavior. When faced with an unwanted, repeating pattern, however, people often think of it as a personal failure.

Many times in our dealings with folks we hear, "Oh, I thought I was over that by now. I’m so much better than I used to be."

There is an anecdote we like to share in such situations. It is from a time in Ariel’s childhood and it is told from her point of view:

Brownie, our dog, was barking wildly at the cat. Of course this was nothing new. My sister Mary’s little reddish brown toy Cocker Spaniel was a fierce warrior and family protector. Many a time our neighbor, old Mr. Van, would hobble up the hill with a rubber thong on only one foot snorting, "Where is that confounded dog?!" I once actually saw the little furry devil get so excited barking at a car that he buried his teeth in a tire and barely let go in time, as his whole body began to follow the tire’s rotation.

When Mary was in second grade she wrote a poem that still lives in my memory because, as her little sister, I thought it was exceedingly clever: "Brownie is the bravest dog I ever knew. He chases the milkman and he even bit Grandma."

Now that you have our family dog’s background, it’s time to tell you more about when Brownie chased the cat.

It was a dark evening and Brownie had followed the cat, slipping into the garage through a door that was left ajar. Our garage, an old building separate from the house, was mainly a repository for bed frames, wooden skis, gardening tools and the like. Rarely did my parents park a car in there, as the big wooden door was heavy and creaky and not easily lifted.

It was a Thursday night and our family was getting ready to go to a concert at my eldest sister Cathy’s Junior High School. She had on a skirt, a white blouse and a beautiful new mohair cardigan sweater hand-knit by my mother. It was cream-colored and fuzzy with shell buttons and I loved it.

"Cathy," my mother said, "please go out to the garage and get Brownie to stop barking at the cat, would you? Bring him inside so we can go." She’d finished braiding my hair and we were almost ready to leave but there were always lots of details to be handled before she could get her young family out the door and to an event on time.

We had many cats over the span of my childhood but if my memory serves, the current pet was called Pepper. This feisty grey and black striped tabby with a loud raspy purr eventually gifted us with a litter of orange striped and black balls of fur. My father led me into the basement one day to let me "discover" the kittens first.

On this night it seemed that Pepper was holding her own. The shrill, "Bark, bark, bark… Bark, bark, bark," relentlessly repeated and got louder in intensity as I followed Cathy to the garage. Brownie’s barking didn’t skip a beat as the heavy garage door creaked and groaned in protest as Cathy used all her strength to lift it open. The bare bulb on the outside fixture at the apex of the roof sent fingers of light into the musty darkness. It wasn’t enough to illuminate much but I could see Brownie furiously expressing his outrage at Pepper whose silhouette was barely visible as she faced him down, wedged between a couple of bikes.

"Come on, Brownie," Cathy coaxed in the semi-bored tone that I adored, since she was such a mature pre-teen and all. But our dog was being particularly stubborn, not knowing we had places to go and a new sweater to show off.

Cathy did not need to reach for the inside light switch as Brownie was clearly, albeit dimly, in view. But in retrospect, I’m sure she wished that she had. As my sister strode forward, leaning in to grab him, Pepper turned tail and presented us her backside. In that moment, both Cathy and I knew why Brownie had been so relentless. The vague light from the doorway caught the thick white stripe down the creature’s back and in the wink of an eye, "pfffft." Both Cathy and Brownie were sprayed by a skunk.

We didn’t make it to the concert that night. My sister’s outfit was buried out back, new sweater and all. Both the dog and she took turns getting bathed in tomato juice, a remedy said to neutralize the stench.

Cathy didn’t go back to school until the following Monday as the lingering odor still followed her around. The kids who were blunt, honest and sometimes cruel had plenty to tease her about. "PeeUuu, you stink!" they cried.

Head held high, she quipped, "Oh, I hardly smell at all anymore. You should have smelled me last week."

Perhaps you are proud that you cleaned up an old way of relating or being that you didn’t like. But if you assume it is a closed book, a completed chapter, you may not notice the vestiges of stinky behaviors that, from time-to-time, reappear in your life. If you see an old behavior, it may not look, feel (or smell) so good but take a page from Cathy’s playbook and hold your head high. Don’t worry. If you simply allow yourself to be you, smell and all, without judging yourself, this too shall pass.