Kids and Dogs

The events described happened Saturday, June 25, 2011.  This is not a reprint or a second-hand story.  The events and characters are real.

As we often do, my parents and my family eat lunch together on Saturdays.  Typically, we frequent a Thai restaurant here in San Antonio called Thai Cafe.  My son, a lover of Thai noodles, as of this writing, is 28 months old and an advanced chatterbox.  He’s become quite good at describing in words what he wants us to know.  Although, when frustrated, he tends to prefer to demonstrate his angst with interpretive defiance.

On this Saturday, as a solo dad while my wife was at a wedding in Washington D.C., my son was in a good mood.  We had a pleasant meal and he even was good enough to let my parents and I talk for a few minutes.  Glancing at the clock, it was a little later than his typical nap time, and I hoped he would not sleep in the car on the way as this often interferes with his ability to nap once we get home.  The car ride home, he was talkative for about half of the 20 minutes back to the house.  Keeping an eye on him in the rearview mirror as we turned into my neighborhood, I was relieved to see he was still awake and alert.  With heavy eyelids, he was still actively looking at things as we drove by them.  Making the final right turn on my street and approaching our driveway, as I position the car to back into the garage, as I normally do, my son says excitedly “Who’s that, Daddy!?”

Stopping the car, I check all my mirrors and look in all my blind spots.  I see no one around the car, nor is anyone approaching the vehicle.

“Did you see somebody?” I ask.

“Who are those people, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, baby, what do you see?”

“Those people, right there!” he says straining against the car seat straps.  “Those people!”  He pushes his small finger against the glass.

“I don’t see anybody.”

“Why are they crying, Daddy?”

“Do you see someone crying?” I persist.

“Daddy, the’re right there!  Why are they sad!?  They’re crying, Daddy!  Who are they?”

“I don’t see anybody, baby.” as I keep the car going backwards into the garage.

Properly positioned in the garage, I quickly shut the car off as my son tugs at the straps of his car seat, trying to unfasten the straps himself.  Running around the car, I quickly open the car door, get him out of the car seat, and stand him up pointing toward the garage door, neither of us saying a word through the exit process, until I break the silence.

“Show me where the crying people are.” I demand, excited and creeped out.

He runs to the driveway, just outside the garage, looking to the same area of the yard he was pointing while we were in the car.

“Where’d they go, Daddy?”

“I don’t know.  Are they not they anymore?  Are the crying people gone?”

He walks into the grass, and turns 360 degrees.

“I don’t see them anymore, Daddy.  They were crying.”

Looking into the waning box hedges in front of the house, I presume as a last resort, he raises his palms as to suggest he cannot find the crying people.

“They’re gone, Daddy.”  He looks confused and a little sad himself.

I’ve heard it said before that kids and dogs see things us average adults don’t.  I don’t have a dog.