When dogs, yes real dogs, take charge and give you orders!

I’m seated in the car listening to the radio. Bob Marley comes on and is telling me “not to worry, everything is gonna be alright!”  I pause, momentarily, and let his words sink. They do but not quite. This industry is one unsympathetic course that pays no mind to anyone in particular. Stuff just happens.

To that end, I take his sentiments with a pinch of salt. A phone call comes through interrupting my thought line. It’s Candy. She wants to be picked up in the shortest time possible.

Candy, as her name suggests, is one of those kind of girls that like to have their cake - and by cake, I mean life - and eat it too, savouring every little bit to the very last chunk. She’s learned, meaning she’s not your regular half-wit bimbo riding on nothing else save for a face buried well beneath layers upon layers of artificial cosmetics.

She’s also well-connected to all the right people in all the right places. She’s insanely hot and blessed with that Ethiopia skin. She drives a German beast (a convertible) and men crazy. To put the lid on it, she has an attitude. I remember the very first time I saw her, I married her right there!

We had babies, all in my head and I made peace with it. Now, I just observe from the periphery as other men do their jig trying to net her. So far so good, everybody has hit a snag, yet none relents. She must be conquered, dead or alive. That’s the brotherly code.

Shoot! I almost forgot to mention she also has a dog, nay, two dogs to be precise. Small white fluffy dogs that seldom stand two inches from the ground. I’ve always had the urge to kick them in their rear end and send them flying to Kilgoris, but I’m yet to find an opportune time.

They wear cute doggy vests, a leash for evening walks and, get this, glasses when it’s too hot, to protect the eyes! This woman could as easily adopt and keep a grown man but then again, men are dogs! Her words. She’s going shoe shopping, she lets me know as she settles in the car.

The dogs too are coming with her. I look at one and it stares right back at me, knowingly.

My life is better than yours! It seems to say. I shift my eyes to the other one, “that’s right, what she said, we are going to the big city in the sun, now drive!” I’m having conversations with dogs! I must be losing it, I think. Driving down the street, I hear the left rear window rolling down. I check. I swear by my receding hairline the silly thing is doing it with her silly paws.

 I’m mad and want to pull over but I don’t. They do that when it’s too hot. Using the rear view mirror, I glance at them one more time. They are both staring right back at me. Knowingly. We get to town and they all alight. Finally, I can breathe.

It’s been about two hours past when I see her strutting towards the car with two brown paper bags in one hand and a pizza box in the other. The silly dogs hurry behind her. I thank the gods she remembered me. I am starving.

I help her in singing melodies in my heart all excited by the pizza surprise. Do you mind setting it on the floor behind my seat so that they can reach it without much hustle? She says handing me the box of pizza.

I look at her, clearly perplexed! I look at the dogs. They are staring right back at me, knowingly, as if telepathically trying to say it, you heard her right, put it on the floor, behind her seat and go drive, now! Bob Marley must have been high on that high-grade grass he loved so much when he did that song!