Lamont Remains Clueless of the Concept of Sleeping in Sunday Mornings
I am a bit grumpy.
At 0 dark 30, my pal, Lamont, dropped a regulation size football on my head while I was quite contentedly asleep, in my bed, on this very early Sunday morning.
"Time to get up!" he announced. He was not in a mood for compromise. I pulled the cover over my head and pleaded for some sympathy.
He then deployed his full arsenal, and blasted reveille in my ear with his bugle, making it clear I had little choice.
Lamont was already dressed in his winter outfit—the canine equivalent of golf shoes, a smart Burberry overcoat, a top hat, and his walking stick, fully ready to take on the new day.
It was dark. It was Sunday morning. Lamont did not care.
He dragged me out of bed, put on my leash, handed me a couple of plastic poop bags, and ordered me to perform what has increasingly been clear to be my function in life; to serve his every want and whim, when and how he defines it.
The insufferably perky mutt dragged me out into the unspeakably frigid winter morning so he could inspect the world, making sure everything was still under control. We sniffed, and peed, and pooped, and growled, and whimpered our way around the perimeter of the neighborhood until Lamont was satisfied the AO was stable and free of enemy infiltration and threats.
Everything was under control since Lamont last left the couch and bed yesterday evening.
That was when he insisted we take a stroll in Abraham Lincoln Park in the high wind and freezing rain after dark. Where Lamont found the football (nee soccer ball for those of us Americans).
It has inscribed Gallaudet University, America's premier university for the deaf, across the ball. The slogan "Work hard. Play Hard" was inked on along the seams.
This was no plastic toy. This was a professional, leather regulation football that Lamont found abandoned in the park. It was fully functional when we found it. He rolled it with his snout for a good half mile, attacking it with his formidable teeth, batted it about with his paws, until it was fully in submission.
And sufficiently deflated so he could grasp it in his teeth.
The football was approximately three times the size of Lamont. And he pranced his way home holding the newly discovered prize aloft in his snout, making sure that all passerby noted his discovery.
The only problem being that Lamont could not see anything, given the football was bigger than Lamont—about three times the size of his head– and blocked his view of anything in front of him.
So he bumped into trees, fell off the sidewalk, tripped on the curb, and ignored oncoming vehicles, unwilling to loosen his grip on his new prized discovery. And he brought it home.
Where Lamont proceeded to disassemble the football.
He ripped off the leather covering, exposing the rubber inner tube. Which he ripped into several dozen pieces splayed around the living room. Which, I of course, dutifully picked up and disposed of.
The remaining now deflated leather ball became the focus of the remainder of Lamont's evening.
He dropped it repeatedly on my computer keyboard when I was cheeky enough to not be paying sufficient attention to the mutt. So I would throw it down the stairs, and Lamont woud tear after it, giving me a few seconds of precious peace. Until he returned. And dropped it on my computer keyboard again. And we repeated the process.
I called it an early night last night.
Lamont brought the football to bed. And, firmly clenched between his impressive teeth, insisted on bringing it under the covers when he crawled into bed to join me.
And emerged sometime well before dawn and dropped it on my head. When I didn't respond in an appropriately timely manner, he pushed the remnants of the ball up into my nose and yelped.
When I resisted, he pulled out the dreaded reveille bugle. And we went out where not another living being was fool enough to venture at that hour or in this weather.
Lamont has shown no regret. On our return, he insisted on breakfast and is now on the chair adjacent to my computer, his snout on the arm staring at me, the football clenched in his teeth.
This may be a long day. ■