FERS Disability

Last Updated on May 9, 2008 by FERS Disability Attorney

Once, Tony brought a puppy mongrel; it had white spots upon a greenish-brown undercoat of fur, a tail that curved unnaturally and defectively, as if the curvature of the extended spine had snapped in half; and a coat that was matted around the hind legs and bottom area, as if the sweat glands of the poor and pitiful creature coagulated in one-half of its body, drenching his private parts, his hind quarters and his tail in a pervasive stench of musty sweat, urine and a mixture of fungus-like pallor. Tony brought it in a cardboard box, and the creature had already performed some unsightly act within its confinement, and the sour odor followed him into the restaurant. But, inasmuch as the doors of the Corner Pancake House had not yet officially opened to the public, no one seemed to notice; certainly, not Judy.

She looked serenely upon the pitiable creature.

Tony half-threw and half-flung the box onto the counter, and one could almost see the thickness of the stench push its way into the air as dog, box and soiled matter were shaken and jumbled to become a stew-like admixture. “Ya want-im?” Tony growled.

“Well, I…” Judy began to stammer, but before she could finish, her boss had already turned around and started for the kitchen.

She went to the box and peered over the cardboard wall, into the private quarters of a dog that sat in its own mess. The puppy looked at her. Its eyes told her that he was ashamed; of what, the creature knew not; but perhaps from the tone, the voices, the disdain; for within its short lifespan, the puppy knew of its own ugliness. Creatures great and small; of the magnitude of man, to the lowliest of all; lack of love can be felt by all, if not understood. For one may even conclude that hell is the negation of love; and, indeed, such would be an eternal punishment, unendurable; to be in a pit of void; of distance; never feeling the embrace of love. In the cramped space of the box, its tail attempted to wag. It was a broken tail; its curvature was supposed to extend gracefully to reveal the elongation of its spine; but instead, it abruptly broke unnaturally upward and to its left, so that it had the effect of a bent antennae, and in wagging, it knocked violently and loudly against the side of the box in a circular, counter-clockwise movement, with each wag picking up a bit of soil and urine and splattering a spot in every direction. Judy gave a slight gasp, and put two fingers up to her lips; it was to either stop herself from crying, or hold a laugh; for to laugh at such a creature would have been cruel; yet, not to laugh would have been horribly unnatural. For, indeed, the poor creature was a sight to behold, to pity, to hold at a nose’s distance, yet at the same time to love.

She shook her head. “Yes, Tony!” Judy shouted as he entered the double-doors of the kitchen. “I’ll take him!”

Tony grunted some response, but she could not make out what he said. For the remainder of the day, the dog was kept in the box in the storage room behind the kitchen; multiple employees (those high school girls whose apprenticeship into life’s harsh realities were dependent upon the charitable honorarium of Tony) peered as they entered the stockroom, wrinkled their noses at the repulsively foreign odor, then quickly exited and left the whimpers behind. For in this world where childhood is shortened, where girls become women at earlier ages; where a pause to meditate or become “philosophical” merely means that one has dawdled to allow others to get ahead; an ugly puppy is a worthless entity. An ugly puppy that smells is a needless distraction. An ugly puppy who smells, and who is defective, is a waste of one’s self-centered time. For as man’s life is no longer viewed as just lower than angels; no, the poetry of past eras has been lost; there was a time when the magnificence of man was beheld upon a pedestal with wonderment; but the Darwinian view knocked him from that awe-stricken sphere, sending him spiraling downwards, and so poetry, heroism, and all that was held to be honorable, came tumbling down.

From a very early age, Colleen loved to have her younger sister, Judy, brush her hair. It was a bond of love between them; younger sister would brush older sister’s hair with a large hair brush each night before bedtime; and sometimes Judy would do it until her arm would cramp with pain; but she didn’t mind, because she knew how much Colleen loved the feel of the soft stroke massaging her scalp, and running through the fine strands of hair, repeatedly, with loving care. This same love, Colleen transferred upon Giggles. They called this ugly mutt that, because of the love the two sisters shared; of memories born with a teleology of love; where first causes formed from love; where final causes formed out of love; and from their happiness, they recognized the bond of laughter; and, indeed, upon bringing the unsightly cur home, Colleen began to giggle, putting her hand over her mouth, until the giggling erupted into uncontrollable trembles of delight, and the two of them rolled on the carpet beside the box, and from the floor, one could view the angular antennae wagging sheepishly from within the cardboard penitentiary; and from that moment, his name was Giggles. And even that ugly mutt, for the first time in its life, didn’t mind the laughter of the two; for the laughter was no longer of disdain, but born of love.

Judy gave strict instructions. Once in the morning, twice in the afternoon, Colleen was to take Giggles for a walk through the garden and grassy knoll just behind the apartment complex. She was to speak to no one. She was to walk the exact same route, which, timed with precision, took 7 ½ minutes. Then, back to the apartment. Colleen would follow such instructions without wavering from strict adherence to simple, firm instructions. She was good about that.

But love has a funny way of transcending strict adherence, especially where extension beyond the perimeters of instructions did not constitute a violation; rather, since no restrictions forbade such extension, and no explicit statements condemned her actions; when she came back into the apartment, she would use an old hairbrush that she had kept as a memento of their earlier days, when Mom and Dad were still within the perimeter of her life, and she would stroke the dog – long, patient strokes, from the top of its head to the end of its bent antennae; short strokes down its hind quarters; soft strokes to its underbelly; careful strokes from its chin to its chest; three times a day; a hundred times per session. Gradually, whether by the transference of its bodily oils from its hind quarters to other areas of its body; thereby spreading evenly throughout its body, or perhaps from the scintillating disturbance by the constant brushing of glands that were suddenly awakened to function, the color of its coat began to be transformed; and as puppy grew into a mature dog, its unsightly features began to turn into a shiny, golden coat of majesty. And beyond, for the bent antennae – that unnatural angular extension that presented a crooked sight of distortion – gradually began to straighten.

There is no other way to put it: Giggles grew up to be a beautiful dog.

Now, years later, when Tony saw Judy and Colleen walking one day in the Town Center, he saw this majestic creature, and murmured to himself, “Well, I’ll be – ” A tear welled up, and almost crested for public viewing; but Tony was too quick for that. No one saw the sniffle; no one saw the tear that was almost shed. Instead, he turned away. For he knew that such beauty could only be born of love; that such a dog could only – ah, but indeed, such thoughts are rather insignificant. For it matters not whether he knew such things; more importantly, Tony knew that, from the very beginning, it would take the love of Judy and Colleen to care for the pitiful creature. Tony knew that he could never come to love such a creature; and perhaps he saw in the unsightly mutt a reflection of himself; but he had the wisdom to turn to the someone who could provide the necessary love.

As for the dog itself, the real question is: was it the brushing, or was it the love? Does love transform? Or, as the Darwinians and materialists insist, is there no such transcendent essence; is it merely a combination of chemical and biological interactions which produce a “feeling”, and nothing more? Or is there that which we term “love” – an essence of humanity, transcending human emotion or feeling, and that which exceeds the collective workings of the biological entity called Man? Are there essences and existences, the true qualitative Being which cannot be defined, embraced, explained or encapsulated by mere words alone? Can we capture everything around us by the use of words? Is Wittgenstein right that everything is merely a language game, but that our language games are self-contained, and do not correspond to the Being-ness of the world we inhabit? Is love nothing more than a ruse?

And yet, sometime, the Reader may want to come down to the Town Center where Judy, Colleen and Giggles often walk on Sunday afternoons. They will skip, laugh, giggle, pause and hug each other, and the creature who, but for the love of two sisters, would have died a lonely and abandoned death. Ah, but let us also remind ourselves – but for the love of Tony.