Ginger (revision 3)

Ginger was a mix. Part Cocker Spaniel, part Poodle, a Cockerpoo.

She traveled with us as a member of the family through all our time in Morocco and France and moved with us to Charleston and then to San Antonio. When she wasn't stretched out on the floor, bare stomach on a cool floor, head up and hind legs splayed behind her, she was being lugged across the room by a three year old, back feet dragging, or engaged in her favorite pastime, chasing the ball. Her good-natured happiness was most certainly a constant in our ever changing world of rotations and new schools, and there can be no doubt that everyone in the family felt their own personal connection to her. Even so, she slept at the foot of my bed as I grew from a fourth grader though half my teenage years and I, most certainly, considered her "my dog."

Anyway, I must have been about nine our first summer in Morocco when Ginger joined our family. At that time, we lived on base, a razor-wired compound complete with armed guards and security check points separating us from ominous looking men in white robes and women with face-covering veils walking the highway outside.

Mom and Dad, usually extremely safety conscious, allowed me to roam freely in the housing area because we were deep in the middle of the compound and the whole area was so well protected by the AP's, Moroccan Police and other high security measures common to an American military base in a foreign country.

During one of my excursions that, to me, seemed to take me miles from home, I ran across a sign made from the side of a cardboard box that said in black marker, "Free Puppies!" I was lured by every nine year old boy's delight ( ! PUPPIES ! ) into the back yard of one of the Governmental Rental Housing units built on the base for Air Force families.

This GRH home looked exactly like every other house in the expansive neighborhood. It had a flat roof and glaring white stucco walls and was surrounded by a luscious, well manicured lawn. The back was enclosed by ten foot tall fencing covered with the deep green and thickly intertwined vines spotted with deep blue morning glory blooms. The fence was bordered on the inside with flower gardens of exploding, lipstick-red gladiolas and crowded white daisies. The grass itself was a thick carpet of deep-green Bermuda, which was cut almost daily and was meticulously policed by the Moroccan yard man who "came with the house."

In one shady corner of this well-tended setting, I saw a television-sized box turned on its side in which I could see a mass of shadowy brown movement that turned out on closer inspection to be a litter of brown puppies nipping and yapping as they climbed all over the mother.

Next to the box, there was one of those old metal lawn chairs (like Big Daddy had) in which a slender oriental woman sat. She was wrangling two or three wriggling puppies in her lap and discussing the transfer of puppy-ownership with another kid who had brought his mother to the Cockerpoo bonanza.

The pretty lady looked up at me and said in a thick accent (which sounded to me just like Jerry Lewis with buck teeth acting like a Chinese laundry man), "You wan' na puppy?"

One of the puppies leaped at my side, up and down, and up and down over and over as if I had a treat in my hand.

Without any hesitation I said, "Yes, I do."

She said in the same thick accent, "Yu Momma know you wan' na puppy?"

I said, "Yes, Mom wants me to pick out a puppy [To Middle and Youngest, Mom was still "Mommy," though most definitely never "Momma." But to me, at age nine, she was "Mom"].


I quickly added to increase my authority level, "I always pick out our puppies."

That was all true . . . sort of.

I had been asking for a puppy since we had arrived in Casablanca (we left Pepper in Denver) and had been on the receiving end of various versions of the easily recognized adult delay tactic embodied by the words, "We'll see" or "When we can find a good one."

Of course, I interpreted every one of these tacit responses as a hearty endorsement of the concept that we needed a puppy and a definite commitment to get one immediately as soon as we could find one.

Why, you might ask.

Because like the self-respecting Cub Scout who had already achieved the rank of Lion that I was, I assumed everyone intuitively understood that a puppy was a given for every household. I didn't know anyone without a dog. A frog, or a fish or even a turtle was no substitute, and so, to me, our lack of a puppy was a deprivation that had to be remedied as soon as possible. In that context, I certainly accepted it as fortuitous that I would stumble on "Free Puppies!" Everyone would be delighted!

Anyway, as I looked at the puppy in the oriental woman's lap, she pointed to the leaping puppy and said, "Tha' puppy name 'Jump.' He like a jump." She showed me how to knee him in the chest to make him stop and as he tumbled and rolled in the thick green grass, she asked "You like a 'Jump?'"

Before I could answer, another rolly-poly puppy began pulling on my jean leg with his sharp puppy teeth as if he intended to pull me down.

She looked at him as said "tha' puppy name "Bite" . . . You like Bite?'"

Again before I could answer, I was happily introduced to "Fight" and "Run," who along with "Bite" actually knocked me off my feet. That's when I met "Lick" and several other puppies with no names as they all climbed over me, nipping, licking, nuzzling and yapping, warm puppy tummies dragging over my arms. I instinctively jumped up off the grass when she announced laughingly, "Here come 'TT,'" because by this time, I figured out how she named the puppies and knew I better get up before I was sprayed. As I did, she shooed all the puppies back to the box.

At that point, I saw, in the corner of the yard;

in the distant, shady, isolated corner of the back yard;

in the cool garden dirt of the distant, shady, isolated corner of the back yard,

I saw a small, squirrel-sized bundle of puppy lying prone, back legs splayed and head on front paws.

I asked, "What's that puppy's name?"

The lady smiled, predicting that she would indeed have at least one puppy fewer that afternoon, and answered, "Tha' puppy name 'Quiet.' Go, you pet."

I walked over and picked up "Quiet."

The fur ball immediately snuggled her head between my shoulder and neck. I scratched her long droopy ears and she looked at me with her chocolate brown eyes, and we immediately and permanently bonded.

In a minute, I left for home with "Quiet" as the lady watched approvingly.

Mom tells the rest of the story from a different vantage point.

I arrived home with our new puppy and Mom didn't know what to do. Apparently, despite my deprivation, she never even considered the possibility that in Morocco, I might find a puppy and bring it home. She could only say, "Let's see what Daddy says," and her inability to articulate a clear "No Puppy" allowed the subtle shift in the status quo. We now had a puppy, and as we passed her around, Middle and Youngest were taken in and also irreversibly bonded. In fact, it wasn't too long before Mom picked up the puppy and then spent the afternoon trying not to become captivated as well.

While we waited for Dad to arrive to join in our joy, we played with "Quiet" in the back yard cabana and dragged her on our various neighborhood rounds. We showed her to Terry and Cathy, carried her into the tree house and dragged her to the way back of the yard by the swing set. Middle even held her in her lap while she rode the teeter totter. "Quiet" seemed completely content whether she was being carried like a small sack of potatoes, swinging wildly on the swing set, or simply sitting at our feet.

Of course, it meant nothing to me at the time but seems significant now, that each time one of us suggested an official name for Quiet, Mom reiterated, "Let's wait for Daddy." It was as if not naming the puppy might reverse the intense, ongoing bonding.

I suggested "Sport" or "Ranger." Even though those names were deemed unacceptable when the girls pointed out that Quite was in fact, a female, Mom said, "Let's wait for Daddy."

Middle suggested Barbee, to which I bristled, and Mom repeated with a little more emphasis, "Let's just wait for Daddy."

Youngest even tried to name her by suggesting in a loud, sing-songy two year old voice, "how about Fruit Loop," the name of her then-favorite cereal. "Let's just wait for Daddy."

Well, Dad finally arrived home, and Mom met with him in the house, alone, as parents often do, and when they joined us in the cabana to look over the dog. Mom kept saying, "I think there is something wrong."

Dad agreed that the dog was pretty docile as she slooped herself passively over my knees like a cat drooping from a tree limb without protest.

In the end, we all packed into the car and drove to the oriental lady's house where Mom gently carried the puppy into the back yard and said, "Excuse me, my son brought this puppy home this afternoon, and we think she's sick."

The lady stood up from her lawn chair, navigated through a sea of other brown puppies, examined Quiet and declared in the same thick accent, "Thith puppy not 'Thick.'"

Then, pointing her finger to the other corner of the yard at a obviously overweight dog sibling, she said "tha' puppy name 'Thick,' thith puppy name 'Quiet.'"

We all laughed as "Jump" leaped out of the box toward the lady, and "Bite" grabbed Dad's pant leg while "Lick" greeted middle child, tongue to face and youngest squealed with delight chasing after "Run Run Run."

After a few minutes of discussion between the lady and Mom and Dad, they were convinced the puppy was okay, and we drove home with "Quiet" sitting peacefully on the floor of our big blue station wagon, as long as a locomotive.

Someone noticed "Quiet" was the color of a ginger snap and Mom said, "Let's just name her 'Ginger.'"

©2006 David R. Childress. All Rights Reserved.