By Nate Thayer
June 21,2014
Today, 21 June, is the official first day of summer, the summer Solstice,and the calendar year's longest day of sunlight here in the Northern hemisphere, when the sun appears at it's furthest North from the celestial equator. That means it is hot and will get hotter in upcoming weeks.
As it appears there remains some knuckleheads who remain unclear on the concept, because of aforementioned meteorological truths, people should not leave little children and dogs locked in their cars, with the windows up, air-conditioning turned off, and deprived of hydration for any significant length of time because they will die. And then you will be very distraught, in jail, or, hopefully, both.
The temperature inside a car can reach 47 C within an hour when the outside temperature is 22 C. Or, for the last holdouts on the planet who still refuse to get with the metric system program and still think only in Fahrenheit (that would be my people), on a 78 degree day, temperatures in a car parked in the sun will exceed 160 degrees within an hour. And your dog or child will die. This concludes this Public Service Announcement and will be my first,only,and last, contribution to the increasingly annoying Nanny State we are living in. If you were not already aware of this, obviously, you probably should not have either children or dogs.
Another under reported, and serious threat to human health, is to that of any bonehead who tries to fuck with me and stick their unsolicited nose in judgment of how I attend to the already embarrassingly absurd levels of 24/7 coddled doting I lavish on my mutts, which, borders on reducing me to the function of the dog's personal concierge and butler, and, if anything, should elicit sneers of derision and chuckles rightly directed my way.
Not long ago, some misguided busybody made the mistake of misinterpreting this truth, which I am confident she now greatly regrets. I was riding in my 20 year old beat up Ford 150 pickup truck on our daily foray into town, accompanied by my mongrel-God rest her soul-Scoop, to pick up the newspaper. Scoop was born in a fetid Bangkok sewage ditch before she hit the canine jackpot and accompanied me back to a 70 acre waterfront farm on the Chesapeake Bay, which she reigned over like the entitled royalty she believed her pea-brained self to be.
I left Scoop in said truck, with a bowl of water on the floor, the windows down sufficiently to allow for a breeze but not for her to jump out into the harms way of vehicular traffic, the doors unlocked, parked 20 feet from me directly in front of the family run general store I entered to retrieve the four daily U.S. newspapers which they always reserved for me.
Scoop had some psychological issues.
Whenever I left her presence, even when she could clearly see me through the large storefront window, the canine drama queen would create an unusually attention grabbing ruckus, making sounds suggesting she was undergoing severe water boarding or, as George Bush might say of "renditioned" Jihadists held at secret black sites, the recipient of non-consensual "enhanced coercive interrogation techniques" employing "the tools necessary to protect the American people."
While waiting in line at the cash register, I noticed a woman of a certain age, wearing sensible shoes, circling my vehicle, looking around the parking lot furtively, and pressing her nose up against my trucks windows. Scoop, playing to the audience, exploited the smug anxiety of the do-gooder zealot and fool, by escalating her simulation of being a detainee suffering unspeakably under the harsh treatment of her captor-which the hovering woman was convinced was me.
Before I could exit the store with my loot of the daily newspapers, the pursed lipped social fascist vigilante in sensible shoes and not enough real problems in her life, had opened the truck door and Scoop fled, escaping from her looming, frightening grip into the relative safety of the vehicular traffic on the street.
I bolted the store, retrieved my dog, and placed her back in the protective safety of my truck before turning my laser focus on said do-gooder.
She actually had the audacious temerity to briefly-very briefly- attempt to lecture me, accusing me of animal abuse, began an ideological rebuke of my conduct, and instructed me on the dangers of heat stroke to Scoop which she had concluded was directly caused by my neglect, ignorance,and heinous maltreatment of animals.
This was quite quickly aborted as, before she could finish her sentence, I did a fairly reasonable impression of a United States Marine boot camp drill sergeant, and had her bent backward over the hood of my truck with my 6-2 inch frame straddling over her like a hovercraft over water, her head parallel to the truck's hood, face looking skyward, her view obscured by my head looming inches above hers, my eyes directly focused on hers, and my voice barking, at full volume, some fucking sense into her .
I was succinct and clear that her future and her health were in immediate danger of taking a very dire turn for the worse if she did not both shut the fuck up and listen very, very closely.
I revisited the events of the previous moments, the highlights of which were dominated by the fact that it was she who had put my mutt in the present danger of harm, directly causing him to flee her frightening zealotry to the relative safety of moving, oncoming vehicular traffic, and, to boot, she had committed what appeared to be a felony of breaking and entering into a vehicle without authorization of its owner and concluded I fully intended to ensure she faced the full wrath of justice, with or without the collaboration of government authorized law enforcement authorities.
The poor dear urinated in her relaxed fit Walmart blue Jeans.
I was confident that she had been sufficiently re-educated.
In the meantime, some concerned citizen had called the cops, who sped to a halt in front of my truck. The woman stuttered and hemmed and hawed and essentially begged to be allowed to flee her self induced nightmare. I said nothing.The cops eyed me with suspicion.
The woman was traumatized, as she well should have been. Scoop was entertained. After giving me the stink eye, the cops left. I was confident I had contributed my small part to slightly elevating the rational smooth functioning of a free society. Everyone went home.
The point of all of the above is: (1) Don't let your children or dogs die of heatstroke by leaving them unreasonably unattended in your car this summer,and (2) don't be a self important social policy vigilante Nazi and fuck with people who already know Point One. ■