Character(s)

One of my favorite TV channels has the slogan "characters welcome." I guess it resonates with me because I would like to believe it...as one who has always heard a different drummer, I have wasted a lot of imaginative energy wishing our society and culture truly welcomed characters. For the most part that just isn't so. Characters, or persons of character, stand out from the crowd. They turn heads, create a stir. But in this country, for the most part, conformity garners likability, convictions generate division. Originality is unrecognized or ridiculed. Pretense is tolerated; honesty is reviled and sometimes downright dangerous.

One thing dogs are, it's honest. They're pissed, you know it. They're sad, their entire being radiates dejection. They adore you, you bask in an aura of love. And if they don't like you, well, pretending is not in a dog's repertoire. I've probably spent more time in the company of dogs than among my fellow humans. Some of their attributes have informed the way I interact with the world; sometimes that's good, sometimes not so much. I tend to call it like I see it, as they do. That's not generally well-received.

Our expectations for our dogs far outstrip equivalent human capacity to measure up. We expect our dogs to never be irritable, or if they are, to not show that in any obvious way. We expect a dog to tolerate whatever comes their way, whatever is dished out. Inappropriate discipline, inadequate socialization, minimal mental stimulation, social isolation, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, all of these and more are heaped on our dogs and we expect them to keep on wagging their tails, keep on licking our hands, keep on wearing stupid costumes and tolerating the baby's fingers in their ears and our tread on their tails. A dog that growls is seen as bad, even dangerous. A dog that snaps is "disloyal" or has "turned." A dog that actually does bite is condemned, sometimes to a life in a cage and muzzle, sometimes to death.

How many times have we lost our temper, said or done something we'd like to take back, something hurtful, something vile, something bruising to relationships or even bodies? I know I don't measure up. I've snapped at my daughter, ducked a call from an old friend, been snide to another friend, forgotten my brother's anniversary, my sister-in-law's birthday, ripped a few folks a new asshole. And that's just in the past week...I couldn't begin to document the faults and failings of this particular character over my half-century in this world. I'm just glad I'm not a dog, I'd have been given the long sleep a long time ago. The world prefers its characters in a format controllable with a remote.