The dog

The dog has certain noise-related issues.
The gentle hum of a bluebottle’s wings, for example, can whip him up into a barking frenzy. A person might exhale loudly two miles away and the dog’s outside barking menacingly in case they might have fancy ideas about coming over here and sighing loudly near a blade of our grass.
We’ve consulted the books and Internet on how to deal with these barking problems and one said when the dog barks throw water in its face. Did I mention the dog is mentally challenged? Every time I open the back door he races up, stands there while I throw freezing cold water in his face and then runs away soaked. He hates it but every time the door opens he’s there. The dog either has the memory of a goldfish or, as I strongly suspect, is tres stupido.
So today I made lunch for the middle boy – a culinary delight of beans and toast. The child complained about the substandard beans and told me that from now on ‘if they aren’t Heinz then it ain’t happening’. I worry for the boy. I fear he’s picking up street talk from those crappy American made-for-TV movies he is forced to watch in the afternoons at Granny’s.
So he goes out to the garden to play with the dog. Someone has the audacity to cough nearby and the dog’s flipping out, barking, jumping at the fence and making a general nuisance of himself. I fill a full pint glass up with ice-cold water and open the back door. The water had already left the glass and was in mid-flight when I realized the boy was directly in the line of fire. Ice cold water right in the cooter. That child will never disrespect my beans again.
Reminded me of the time I sat in Castle Court during my lunch hour. This was back in the old days when there were fountains and water features below the escalators. While I sat there chatting on the mobile a mother and her young daughter came down and sat beside me at the edge of the water. The mother impressed upon her daughter that she’d be less than pleased if she got her new clothes wet. There was a couple of loud ‘don’t you durr’s, and a few ‘I’ll tell ya naa-ow’s” as she fixed her immaculate make-up and salon fresh hair in a compact mirror.
I hadn’t realised that the sleeve of my jacket had been soaking in the water for a good 10 minutes and when I went to put my coat on the soaking wet sleeve and the good pint and a half of stinky standard issue shopping centre fountain water flung up in the air and hit the ma directly in the face.
There was a brief moment reminiscent of the cowboy films when the two boyos stand face to face before they draw their guns. Similarly there was a brief moment of silence and shock before the ma started howling at me, water and expensive make-up dripping from her face.
I tried to explain the coat, the sleeve, the stinky water, and the mistake. She just rolled off every obscene word she knew, and fair play to her she was quite knowledgeable.
I tried to offer her tissues, apologies, to burn my coat right there and then in a symbolic gesture. In the end I had to just walk away explaining to everyone from there and the front door that ‘it was the coat, water, sorry’, ‘coat, water, sorry…’
I ran all the way back to the Irish News in case there’d be an angry pitchfork and burning torch-wielding mob of immaculately made-up ladies vying for my blood.
There wasn’t and I survived another day to soak another innocent by-stander..