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.