At the Eaton’s Centre on Saturday, I sat on a bench beside a young woman and her dog. The dog was a young Golden Lab, and he sat happily on the floor, smiling in his dog way at everybody who passed. Not surprisingly, the animal was attracting huge amounts of attention.
A woman with precise grey hair and a confident manner approached the young girl. Theatrically, and with great formality, she asked, “ Would it be alright if I spoke with your friend for a moment?” Looking confused and a little nervous, the girl just nodded her head, not saying a word.
The older woman then leaned in and began to nuzzle the dog with her face. “Oh, honeybee, you have a most felicitous expression on your face. You are a dandy fellow, you are! “ And then she began to speak to the girl, all the while flopping the dogs ears about, “ Yes, we’ve had three Golden Labs. The first one was named Dante, after the great Italian author of The Divine Comedy, and then there was Callas, named after the great opera star….” The girl sat there quietly, her eyes just a little bit frightened. The woman, speaking with her hands as if in a drama class, continued on, interrupting herself again and again with new digressions, each one designed to suggest a life rich with culture and adventure.
A few moments later a frail man in a tracksuit and baseball cap slowly approached the girl. His manner was tentative, like he’d bee thinking about it for sometime now, and you could see in his gaunt face a difficult life. Speaking very softly and with very little confidence, he asked if he could pet the dog. The girl said, “Okay,” and the man slowly reached out and touched the dog’s head. When he saw that nothing bad happened, he began to slowly stroke his head, before melting into a smile. “ I used to have a dog when I was a boy. We called him Stetson and he lived to be 18.” And then he paused for a few seconds before adding, “It’s been so long since I’ve petted a dog. Thank you, thank you so much,” and then he wandered off.