Saturday, June 23, 2007

To buy or not to buy? Is that the question?









If you've seen Shrek III you probably have an image of Antonio Banderas' character "Puss-in boots" indelibly etched in your mind. The most appealing part of his character (at least to me) was the way his already large round eyes would further enlarge, and he would have that, "butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth" expression. It was usually too late for you to do anything about it by the time you discovered he wasn't as innocent as his demeanor suggested.

Yesterday, I was over at the home of some friends of ours and they showed me the two photographs that I've posted here, which not only reminded me of Banderas' character, but of subtle ways that we can get sucked into doing things that we ordinarily wouldn't be caught dead doing. Scroll back up and take a closer look at the two photos. The first one shows Catherine holding a long-haired chihuahua puppy with it's ear drooped, its little eyes round and pleading and its paws in a position that suggests that it desperately needs to be protected. This little runt whose name by the way is Duke, was at the dog shelter when they found him. He clearly recognized that competition for a good home was pretty strong and so he turned on all the charms and wiles that he could muster. It worked! Catherine insisted that they had to give the little fella a home (though she still swears that it was really Ron who couldn't resist the temptation and desperately wanted the dog), and so home came Duke to join the already happy dog clan of Penny and Pogie.

Now the next picture reveals Duke in his true form. Notice how he is comfortably nested in Ron's lap, by the pool, with both ears perked inordinately high, smiling eyes, and an apparently huge grin on his little chihuahua face (all that appears to be missing is a tall glass of tequila). To all intents and purposes he is eating out of Ron's palm, but the real story is that Duke has the whole Mast family including Penny and Pogie, eating out of his Palm. Circumstances can sometimes treat us the same way. At the outset they look, for all the world, to be placid and easily navigable. Somewhere during the journey though, things change and we find ourselves desperately trying to keep up with the circumstances, while asking ourselves what possessed us to embark on the project in the first place. I guess the moral of the story is, don't buy a long-haired chihuahua when you already have two other dogs, until you've really thought through all that it entails.

Seriously though, I guess the real moral of the story is the fact that, not everything is as it appears to be, so we really need to take the time and think through whatever it is we are doing and make sure it is what we are supposed to be doing. Come to think of it, what's such a tiny dog doing with a name like Duke?

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