bully

Posted by admin | March 8, 2020

I was walking the dogs one night when we came across a dog being walked through a yard (as opposed to the sidewalk where we were). The dog was a massive, overweight bulldog that had to weigh at least 125lbs. At first, the dog ignored us as it had business to attend to. Zailey wanted to meet this dog and was chomping at the bit to get to this dog. Milo seemed to be indifferent.

Then the bulldog started to take offense to our presence on his property. I was trying to get Zailey to calm down, but she wasn’t having any of it. I couldn’t get her to move down the sidewalk away from this dog, so I picked her up. She calmed then. I think she was embarrassed to have her dad pick her up. As we were walking uphill and about 3/4ths of the way through our mile walk, I was struggling to carry the forty-something pound Zailey. I made it a dozen steps before asking her to mind me on the walk and let her down. She immediately switched back to crazy girl and we couldn’t proceed again. I picked her up but was a little more gruff with her to show my disappointment. This time, I went three steps before putting her down (not from the exertion, but to see if she was ready to walk, now). She took one last look at the bully and then she was on her way again. She heeled and minded me the rest of the way home.

Bullies are the worst. They’re abusive, mean, and just rude. The worst part is that bullies beget bullies by either getting other people to join in on the bullying or the people being bullied take their frustration out by bullying other people. I’ve spent some time studying bullies because if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m one (reread what I did to Zailey if you want proof).

Time is a bully on me. Just the other day I was commenting about something that happened “just a day or two ago.” I then looked on a calendar and realized that it happened about a month before that. I was ashamed because it was another project that I had started and then abandoned due to other, more pressing things going on. In this case, it was something to help clean up the house, but this seems to happen a lot with my writing.

Fiction tends to show a bully being stood up to and then the bully isn’t a bully anymore. Zailey can’t stand up to me like I can’t stand up to time. Maybe my outlook on this subject is bleak, but I can’t seem to find a way to escape time while I’m still alive. Anyone have any ideas for me?