Ralphie
Ralphie
When I was 5, a pound puppy was a must have, and I wanted one
desperately. I can’t be certain, but I believe nails were broken, eyes
were gouged, and feet were trampled all in the name of motherly love in
their quest to acquire these gilded toys for their offspring. My mother
felt it best, and far more meaningful if she sewed a pound puppy for me
herself. I wouldn’t have argued this idea, if she had any idea how to
sew but I knew there was no stopping her. I figured that if the
finished product looked like my friends' pound puppies than I could let
bygones be bygones.
It was always a bad idea for my mom to sew this stuffed animal, but the
idea only grew worse with time. It took her a while to find the
motivation to attempt to tackle this task. She had many things to do,
and learning to sew, and then proceeding to sew, fell by the waste
side. In time though, she broke out her dusty sewing machine and
proceeded to begin crafting my pound puppy in our dining room. For
weeks it looked like a pound puppy autopsy on the whole first floor of
the house. There was cotton everywhere, along with mismatched ears, eye
buttons, and shreds of fabric that would’ve been part of my pound
puppy’s body. It was actually quite disturbing. When I was child I
believed in earnest that all my dolls came alive when I left the room.
I tried repeatedly to sneak up on them playing. I once sat them all
down, interrogation style, and told them they could trust me. I wanted
them to know that I was completely okay with them being alive, and that
they could do it around me, no problem. This pound-puppy debacle
however, was starting to make that image quite upsetting.
I tried to appeal to my mom’s logical side. I mentioned that no one
else had a homemade pound puppy, and that it wouldn’t count anyway if I
didn’t get the finished dog until I was an adult. It had been weeks,
and at that point, I hadn’t witnessed so much as one completed limb on
this dog. It was time for her to cave.
I believe it was my dad who caved, something about cotton in his food,
and bought me the pound puppy. I was ecstatic! I was thrilled to have a
real pound puppy, and not the desperate scraps of my mother’s good
intentions. I was so happy!
Now if you’ve ever met a pound puppy, you know that they are not
anatomically correct. It’s a judgment call, and for me, my pound puppy
was a boy, named Ralph--the first week. The following week, he was
wearing a dress, and I was calling him Miranda. He really did start
looking like a girl to me. Miranda was wonderful, she was the sister I
never had--for a couple of weeks. After those weeks, I needed Ralph to
make a full recovery from his time as a transvestite, and truly assert
his masculinity, so when he became Ralph again, I put a tie on him. I
needed to be sure this time. Ralph jumped the gender fence enough for
it to be a family discussion on what gender Ralph would belong to for
the week. I’ll admit that Ralph was somewhat indecisive on this, but I
never judged him.