Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

One

It all started, as these things often do, at Costco. I came home with two giant, cheap, squeaky dog toys – two llamas. Or alpacas. Nobody seemed to know.

When I brought them home, I presented them to my boys, who immediately became interested and started sniffing. Even more interested was Irina, who decided that the toys needed to be photographed. Not just ordinary, spontaneous photos. No. Staged photos.

From that moment on, everything went downhill.

I have never seen the dogs’ mood change so fast. One minute they were genuinely interested in the new toys. The next, their faces were saying, with remarkable clarity:

“Oh, you like them so much? Fine. You play with them.”

I think Irina tells the story better than I do:

I made a mistake. When Stefan brought the toys home, Baloo was interested in them, but I started taking pictures and wouldn’t let him touch them. Baloo immediately changed his attitude and has ignored them ever since. I apologized and even waved the toys under his nose, but he just wouldn’t have it.

Gicu does whatever he sees Baloo doing.

The only one who showed any interest in the toys was Nephew #2 (who happened to be there with his brother and his father), but he was quickly discouraged by Auntie, who was on an organizing quest that afternoon.

By the end of the day, the nephews were playing soccer with Auntie, positioned at a perfect distance from one another, like the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Even the ball was somehow expected to get from one player to another without the players leaving their assigned spots.

The dogs were also put in place and asked to bark in a very organized manner. They refused. Eventually, they abandoned the humans altogether and hid wherever they could in the house.

The llamas have been returned to Costco.

Two

Two days after the mother of all rains, I took the boys for a walk along the canal in the neighborhood.

The ground was already dry, the sun had done its job, and everything was slowly returning to its Arizona normal: hot, hotter, and hell. There were still a few puddles of mud here and there, sitting on top of older puddles of mud: dark brown, greenish, and wonderfully stinky.

The way the dogs are walking me lately is one in front, at full leash length, and one in the back, also at full leash length. On this particular walk, Baloo was in front, dangerously close to the mud.

Of course, he started rolling in it. Why “of course”? Just because.

I yelled, “Nooooo!” while two guys riding their bikes almost fell into the canal laughing.

I just sat there, looking at my boy, happily rolling around in the mud and having the time of his life.

At that point, there really wasn’t much left to say. Clearly, Nooooo was merely a suggestion.