For the Dogs....

So I just shared with David a memory that I didn't even know I had. For those of you who would like to know MORE random little facts about me, here's a little story for you.

My mom used to have these friends in Little Rock named Rusty and Lois. Rusty had a ton of fish tanks all over his living room and Lois was bleached blonde and hopelessly thin. We spent a lot of our time there for about 6 or 8 months, then I never heard anything else about them.

I was probably only 10 or 11 when all of this took place, and my mom and Rusty and Lois would sit around the living room, talk a lot, and smoke a joint together. In heinsight, I should have been somewhere else, but I usually found myself in the middle of the room watching tv and catching hints of adult conversation here and there. We spent one fourth of July there and I almost caught their house on fire by lighting a roman candle (the one that shoots bright balls of fire) and aiming it upside down toward their bushes.

Anyway, one day we were spending time at their house and Rusty begins to talk about the "Dog Pound" club, or something like that. And they all had these incredibly cool nicknames, like TopDog and BigDog and BadDog. I wanted to be part of this club so bad. I also have no idea why I thought that this was cool, but again, I was 10 or so. I had badly permed hair and puffy bangs, and I coordinated green fold-down socks with green keds.

So in order to be part of the "Dog Pound" you had to eat dog food. I don't know how much, or why...but my mom told me that we could be so cool as some female-dog-name and "Pound Puppy". And we ate Milkbones as part of the initiation. I just ate a little piece, but my husband just found out that I have eaten dog food before. His response?

"Don't worry, I've tried one too."

"WHY?!" (I wanted to be cool and part of a group of middle aged stoners. What's his excuse?!)

"Just curious I guess...my dad did it first."

Parents are really bad influences.