I am a Ninja Master

This evening held great promise. I got off work, which always improves my mood, and I walked outside to find not only the sun still shining, but an altogether lovely day here in Wilson, North Carolina. Not too hot or too humid, just very nice - with the promise of a nice evening as well. I love those late spring evenings, when the temperature drops just enough to make the humidity feel like it's cold, even though it isn't. Add the slightest breeze, and you've got a great night for going out walking, biking, or even sleeping with the windows open. Know what I mean?

Well, it didn't really work out that way.

To begin with, tonight was Mrs. Wiggy's night to go out knitting. Yes, she's wild and crazy, and if she's not knocking over gas stations or shooting up biker bars with an AK-47, one can often find her knitting with her knitting friends in their cozy little nook down the street a ways. Frankly, I suspect terrorist plots. I'm keeping an eye on them.

Anyway.

So, Mrs. Wiggy heads out while I'm still, uh, in the library, but the last words I hear out of her have to do with dogs, floor, and clean. I figure I know what she means. We have two dogs. Dogs of war. Dogs of insurrection. Dogs of confusion. In other words, puppies.

And you know what puppies do? They make messes. In the kitchen. On the floor. And your hero Wiggy was elected to clean said floor. I got out the Spic-n-Span and made with the mop.

This is Milo and Mollie, our Instruments of Destruction With Gusto. They're five months old now, and they eat everything. Tonight, they ate Mrs. Wiggy's Zen Calendar, which is a real shame, because I liked those pithy quotes. And, they ate our Consumer Reports 2005 Yearbook, which we got free with our subscription to Consumer Reports. And you see that stainless-steel dishwasher? Well, it isn't. No. It was a white dishwasher, but it turned out to have some kind of removeable painted aluminum skin covering it. Not any more. Dogs of the Apocalypse, is what they are.

So.

Your ol' pal Wiggy spent six years in the Marine Corps, did you know that? Well, I did. And you know what I can do? I can mop a floor. Swab the deck, as they say. So, I put the dogs out back, moved all the heavy stuff (I'm good at moving heavy stuff, it's thinking that I have a problem with), and got busy, as I said earlier, with that mop.

Not bad, eh? Ol' Wiggy is still good for something around here, I'll tell you what.

Once I got the floor nice and mopped, it was still wet. Didn't want to let the dogs in and ruin that nice floor, so I thought and I thought, and pretty soon I came up with a brilliant idea. I grabbed both dog's harnesses and the new twenty-foot leashes we got them, and a short six-foot leash as well, and a cold beer for lubrication, and I headed out the back door to greet the pooches.

I attached the harnesses and a twenty-foot leash on each one, which is no mean feat when they are wriggle-puppies and want to jump up on daddy and show him how much mud they can find in the backyard by smearing it on his face. They promptly ran in counter-opposing circles and wrapped my feet up in the leashes, and I promptly fell on my butt, which was not as painful as it was dangerous to my beer. That's alcohol abuse, and we can't have that.

I opened the back yard gate to our fence and ushered the mutts out into the front yard. I had brought along the six-foot leash with the vague notion that if Mrs. Wiggy came home from knitting anytime soon, I'd take at least one of the dogs out for a neighborhood walk. Which is why I had it with me. Which has directly to do with the ninja stuff. I'm coming to that.

I then tied a nice half-hitch with a sheepshank knot in the twenty-foot leashes to the front of our porch. Ah, who am I kidding? I tied a couple of granny knots and called it good. I am a Marine, after all. Knots, we leave that to the Navy and the Boy Scouts. But I repeat myself.

So, there I was. In the center of my front yard. The very same yard I've been murdering lately with all kinds of weed killer and grass killer and just about every toxic thing known to Troma Industries. I even had sprinkled some of that dust from the envelope that I got from that group that calls itself the John Dillinger Died for You Society. Never did figure out what that stuff was, I just poured it on and watered it in. And there I stood, in the center of that dead, dead, lawn. With a leash in my hands. A surplus leash. A leash that was not doing anything at the moment.

And I began to twirl that leash.

I twirled that leash faster and faster. I did a nice little figure-eight with it. It got going to a surprising speed, seeing as how it was weighted at one end from the big chrome snap used to connect leash to collar. Yep, got it moving pretty good.

Like a Ninja, I had it going. Like some kinda black-belt karate champion of all time. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris and Bill "Big Foot" Wallace all rolled into one, I was. Spin, spin, spin. Cross over. Spin.

And then, it hit me. No, I mean really. It hit me directly in the center of my punkin' haid. Hard.

And my sakes; I saw the stars, for a brief moment. I wanted very much to sit down on my dead, dead, lawn. Ah, the cool dirt; very welcoming. Ooh, perhaps better to have a stretch-out. Yes, that's better. Look, clouds! For a brief moment, I thought I heard birdies chirping. I remember thinking to myself - "My God, those Bugs Bunny cartoons were right - you do hear little birdies chirping when you knock yourself out." But then I realized that those actually were birdies, and they actually were chirping. With laughter, no doubt. They had better be glad my shotgun is in the house, is what. Rue the day.

So I'm laying there in the cool but very toxic dirt in front of my house, and my dogs are very happy to see me wanting to be more like them. They are stepping all over me and licking me in a most excited way. And I'm thinking to myself - "Oh, so this is what they mean by taking a dirt nap. Hehehehe." And then I'm thinking to myself that Mrs. Wiggy is going to be totally ticked off at me when she comes home from knitting and finds me in the front yard pushing up the daisies, or where they would be if I hadn't kilt them all with chemistry and science.

So, reluctantly...I push myself up off the dirt yard. Brush myself off. Climb up onto the porch with the dogs jumping excitedly all over me - new game, new game! Knock daddy in the dirt, whatch him get up again! Whee!

I found my beer propped up at the foot of the stairs, where I must have placed as I fell down like a pantomime horse, bits and pieces at a time. I never spilled a drop.

Because I am, as we all know, a Ninja Master.