By Tiber
As you may recall from my April post, “Not in Bruges,” Dad rented out a room up here on the third floor to an associate of a friend, who is here on business from Belgium.
His name is Jasper. And Jasper is such a nice person, I’m sure he felt that in coming to stay with such a big and active family as ours, rather than in a hotel, it would give him a real sense of home. The reality, of course, has probably made him want to drive at warp speed to the nearest family planning facility and donate all of his money.
On Jasper’s first night, we forgot to tell Aunt April he was staying here and, seeing him heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night, she went after him with a pitchfork. It bears repeating, how many people do you know who even have a pitchfork in their garage, much less in their bedroom?!?
Then, of course, Jasper accidentally witnessed the horror of the triplets on Easter morning, when they basically explode from the house in camo and ammo and conduct a scorched earth policy until they snag those eggs.
So because of these, and probably other events as well, Jasper has been coming downstairs for dinner less and less.
Dad, whose personality is even larger than, say, “expansive,” thinks Jasper is just shy. And Dad does not “get” shy. “Where’s the hell’s the fun in it?!?”
So he came up to Jasper’s bedroom and ordered, sorry, “invited” Jasper to come down for dinner tonight and enjoy a game of pool with him beforehand.
What we now think happened is that, since Jasper had been planning on snacking in his room, he’d had some Spam in his hand, which he then stuffed into his pocket when Dad coerced him downstairs.
They were in the billiard room under a minute when Dad’s two dogs came in and joyously yelped that it must be Christmas all over again!
Back in December, Dad had given us all the “gift” of a case of Spam, trying to get us to save money on food. Instead of eating it, however, family members had just hidden their portions on and around the tree. The dogs were ecstatic, thinking the new Spam tree was the greatest present ever. And they dragged the whole thing, ornaments and all, outside for their own celebration.
And now, here was more Spam! And this time, it was hidden on this Jasper, who clearly was a 165 lb. Belgian doggie chew-toy!
Jasper took off, with the dogs right behind him and Dad calling out futilely, “They’re very gentle! They’re not going to hurt you!”
I don’t know, owners always say that but even if you had two large, perpetually hungry, out-of-control, pointy-toothed, slobber-spewing people coming after you, I think you’d run too.
