Pet Pals
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It’s not that I don’t want to be helpful. I admire helpful people. I open doors for complete strangers, I do my best when asked by tourists for directions, sometimes I stay after meetings to help put away the chairs. I don’t even have to be asked a second time.
It’s just that it’s hard to be really helpful when you’re committed to a practice of aggressive solitude, in order to compensate for chronic mild sociopathy. Not the kind of sociopathy that makes you want to put sugar in the salt shakers at restaurants or stretch plastic wrap across the toilet bowl in the men’s room. I’m talking about minor league misanthropy, the kind that makes you want to wear dark glasses and a faux hearing aid to social events, so that you can mime “the batteries are dead” whenever someone wants to interrupt your study of Nuns With Baad Habits that you found on the host’s coffee table.
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But I have to do something more … helpful, now that I’ve been joined on the Board of BuFoons by this ridiculously philanthropic pair who’ve recently showed up. It just won’t do to have the Do-Good-ery page lead with Mother Theresa and Mr. Free Clinic and follow with He Opens Doors For People.
So, I’m going to step up. I’ve sent in my application to be a volunteer for Olympic Mountain Pet Pals. If I pass the interview, I’ll get to help socialize cats and dogs waiting for adoption at the Animal Shelter. I know from personal experience that socializing with a dog or cat is much easier than with actual people. [Don’t worry, I didn’t put “mild sociopath” on the application. I’m not a complete moron.] There may be some cage cleaning and dog bathing involved. [No cat bathing. As one of my stage personas, Father Vino Parducci likes to say, “Eet eez eemposseeble to beptize a ket.”]
Now I have to figure out what to wear to the interview. What if I have to pass a cage cleaning test?
