Last weekend we had what you might call a bit of a heat wave here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We decided to hit the road on Saturday and drive down to Monterey so my son and his cousin could play at My Museum and Dennis the Menace park. It was pleasant down there but not too hot. No, it was really hot actually, it was terrible.
On Sunday we had to return his cousin to her home in Suisun City (check out the photo attached to the thumb tack on the map; perfectly represents Suisun's beauty and mystique) before we started racking up late fees. Now if you’re not familiar with Suisun City then, well, good for you. On a cold day the place is a balmy 70; the air conditioners need air conditioners, you know what I mean? So a heat wave pretty much threatens to melt the entire city off the face of the earth. Which may not be a bad thing.
So after a ridiculously sweltering day at my mother-in-law’s house we head home, gratefully watching the temperature steadily drop the whole trip home (having a thermometer on your rear-view mirror is worth it just for that alone). By the time we hit SF it’s probably around 70-75, which is just fine, and we hit the surface streets because the freeway is backed up for some reason once we are off the bridge.
Here’s where the fun really begins. How I can live in SF and not know it was the day of the Gay Pride Parade, I’ll never know.
I know what you’re thinking: this is a story about how we hit traffic and took forever getting home. Or how there were streets closed everywhere and people going wild and we took forever getting home. Or how our car wound up in the Gay Pride Parade all Griswold-family style and I held a gun to a security guard to take us on all the rides. No, this is not that story.
This is a story about how… well, look. We really didn’t see the dog. We just didn’t, it was like the dog just wasn’t even there.
Now before you freak out on me let me jump to the punch-line and say that Bodhi is fine. We actually, seriously, probably saved that elderly dog’s life by slightly grazing his hind leg and removing a cancerous growth from his body.
His owner was crossing an intersection and didn’t have a hold of his leash, so we just didn’t see the dog there. The car tire grazed (literally, just grazed, did not roll over) his paw, so we stopped and I headed back to see what happened. Sina heard some kind of thump, which in itself was probably mortifying, but we realized later that the dog must have physically bumped himself into the car while trying to escape what he thought was certain death.
Now at this point I didn’t know what we had done to this dog, so I had no idea what to expect. Although it was a throng of Gay Pride Parade-goers that I was wading into, it was still a throng. I didn’t know if they’d start beating me or what, I mean for all I know we just ran over a dog.
The dog was walking, not even actually limping, which is of course a good sign. He was bleeding though, so Sina came back around so we could load him up in the ol’ family Vue. Several bystanders helped with either moral or physical support, including the two chicks who were wearing nothing but body paint and pasties. They were more along the lines of moral support I suppose. Well one of them was, the other one almost kind of negated the first one’s contribution to the scenery. Ouch.
We spent hours at the vet, and it was determined that Bodhi had a cyst or tumor of some sort that had been torn almost clean by our vehicular surgery, so they fully removed it, sent it off for biopsy, and stitch him right up. Jeff, the dog’s owner, was pleasant and grateful for our help. So grateful that I doubted from time to time if he realized that we had been ½ responsible for all of this, but I didn’t press the issue.
The whole ordeal was quite exciting for almost-four Ronin, who made up a new game around it. It goes something like this:
Drew gets out of the car before it pulls into the garage.
Ronin: Daddy’s going to get his foot run over!
Mommy: What?
Ronin: (gasp) What’s that thump?
And there you have it, our lovely Gay Pride Weekend story. Don’t run over dogs kids, don't even come close, it ain’t fun.