Oh Tina! In Your Mom's Kitchen?!

An open letter to "Tina":

Dear Tina,

We both know that if your dad saw that one picture (you know which one I mean) of you and Dwight, he would kick Dwight's ass. For real.

Your friend,
Ryan B

But I digress.

It's nice again today, so I was going for a run (I only run when it's nice out. None of what I'm out to prove can happen while getting my sneakers all snowy and feeling my lungs harden like one of those balloons dipped in nitrogen in the science room of your local museum), but Bandit was whiny, so I figured two birds and took him with me.

First of all, dude is fast. We were doing walk/run, but even during the run parts, he was way out in front, and this is including his poop stops (which numbered near the upper half-dozens); I didn't even go once and I still could bearely keep up.

Normally, Bandit is beloved by other dogs and small children (and blankets and old footballs). We had already passed a few of our regular landmarks, including Rotten Sidewalk Apple and the glove I had originally mentally tagged as EXHIBIT J, but now just call Dog-pee Glove because, well, obviously. We got to the dogs that love him and want to make good friends through the chain link. But then we met one of those snarling dogs like you only see on TV outside watchtowers in the prison yards or in alleyways with overflowing dumpsters and springy old mattresses and homeless guys gathered around a flaming barrel. You know, that dog. The fence was pretty high, so even though Bandit was pulling my arm from its socket to get away, I raised my other arm out to my side and said "Jealous? Ooh, look at us, walkin' as far as we want."

So then, (don't worry, Tina, I'm getting to you) we walked through the drive-thru of the nearest convenience store, where I ordered a Red Bull (yes, I know that shit will rot my teeth. If one more person tells me that...Listen, I know it's rotting my teeth, but at least I'll be awake when it happens.) As the clerk walked into the store to get my energy, I heard his co-worker snap "Nuh-uh! He's got nerve!" I knew it was because I was on foot. I leaned into the tiny window and held up my end of the leash. "No, look," I said. "I'm walking my dog. See? I can't come in because of my dog. Otherwise, I'd get my own drink." She bent down to see me and said "Well, I was gonna say 'No he didn't!'" I was thinking she pretty much actually did say that, but whatever. (She gave Bandit a treat, so it's all good now.)

So then, walking home on the opposite side of the street (to get away from the dog version of that seriously mean dude with the tiny hat from Oz), Bandit sniffed out the best thing ever. Under a tangle of duct tape (it had been originally used to mark buried cable under the sidewalk), he found a stack of photographs of my new best friends, Dwight and Tina (not their real names, I assume). Dwight and Tina are sort of cute together, but are obviously meth addicts, or as I like to call them, teenagers. Dwight has a serious case of Huff Mouth, but Tina is gonna be hot in her twenties. She looks sort of like Gwyneth Paltrow when she had brown hair and ate store-bought food.

I'm pretty sure those pictures were meant to be private; I'm guessing Tina threw them out a window after Dwight left her at that party to go score some glue or whatever and she had to call her sister's boyfriend to come get her and well all know how not-cool her sister's boyfriend is. Or maybe she saw the pictures and realized that she's gonna be way happening in a couple years, and he'll always be some coked-out kid who looks like what would happen if Requiem for a Dream were remade with a community theater version of the cast of The Other Sister, and put on the road as a PSA for kids at Meth Camp. And I think we all agree that Tina can do better.