SATURDAY. Party day.
The ordinarily plain dining room was filled with merriment. Out sat multiple paper Dixie cups, each one holding water. I placed a goldfish in each one. I didn't know what exactly I was making, but it had to be special. Over time, the goldfish would appear to expand. They didn't taste any better, though.
Meanwhile, the smell of cupcakes began to waft into the room. Something exciting must be happening.
Today was a Bebe Day party.
Bebe, or Brittany, was our dog. And we loved her very much, especially me. She was a lovable mutt who never failed to make us laugh. We celebrated her by eating cake, wearing party hats, and dancing to "In the Mood" around the island. This was Bebe's official theme song, though we did change the lyrics.
I often declared these types of Bebe Day parties, though I don't recall much else of what went into them. I do remember the party hats. And the goldfish. And that it was a wonderful time.
***
Brittany was born on the same day as me: February 24, 1994. I guess I was destined to always like dogs.
We become good friends. As a baby I would organize her food in the dog dish, stack my plastic Sesame Street letters on her back, and put my dance recital tutu on her. She was very patient.
We also loved to take her for walks around the neighborhood. There was a lot to explore. We'd even go inside houses that were still being built, considering what each room might be and enjoying the smell of fresh wood.
I loved the dogs in my life. From Brittany to the plastic dogs in my preschool classroom to Chance/Chase across the street, dogs were pretty great stuff.
I even had a dog ornament that I bonded with. My mom had made a Christmas ornament in the shape of a poodle's face back in elementary school. One year, it didn't quite make it back into the ornament box. Instead, I had possession of it.
I would take the poodle down to my plastic tent in the basement, one of those tents where you crawled in through the tunnel. I loved that space. I had taken to reading Junie B. Jones books there, with the poodle. It was like we became friends. Eventually, she did make her way back to the ornament box. She still hangs on our tree today, in good condition.
Then there were movies. The Pongo & Perdita sing-a-long by Disney was one of my absolute favorite tapes. It's about a woman who has a bunch of dalmatians and invites a bunch of kids and their dogs over to have a party. The songs were great, the aesthetic was just perfect (oh, to own that water fountain), and it was just a feel-good good time. There was also Good Boy, a movie I saw when it came to theaters, about dogs coming from space. It was my favorite for a time.
But I told my own stories, too. While some of these were play-acting, especially the "Barbie stories," some were written, too. Before I learned to write, Mom would dictate my words onto paper. Few of these stories survived. One of them, naturally, was about a dog who had a birthday party. After we returned from walking the dogs in our neighborhood, I would always be inspired to do more with dog storytelling, be it watching a dog movie or doing a different activity altogether.
Soon, dogs would also be my imaginary friends.
Oh sure, I had a human imaginary friend. Emily and I liked to play on the computer together. Her appearance depended on the day. Sometimes she looked like Nadine from Arthur, who was D.W.'s imaginary friend. Other times she looked like a girl from a computer game I liked. But computer games were basically the extent of our activities.
One day, I sat in my newly finished basement at the Dunst Drive house. It smelled of new, white carpet. The ceiling lights were the flat kind you might see in school classrooms, and some shelves were built into the walls. It was a nice place to hang out. Kelly and I played a flashlight game down there, played on the keyboard, and sang songs from a computer game we liked at the time.
Anyway, I was sitting on the sofa, rubbing my feet against the rug--- a map of the Hundred Acre Wood. I wrote in my Barbie journal, making a list of dog names that sounded interesting. "Mary" topped the list, as I pretended to get off a phone call. This was an important pretend phone call, because Mary's mother had just informed me that she wouldn't be coming to dog school after all. I wrote a misspelled "Canceled" next to her name and continued making a list. This would be fun.
I eventually had a whole class of dogs, but three stick out in my mind. Golde (pronounced Goldie) looked something like Lady from Lady and the Tramp. Lober was a tall, black dogâa Great Dane, perhaps. Abutisum (pronounced aah-buh-tie-some, NOT uh-boot-ih-soom) was basically what you got if you crossed an Afghan hound with Abu from Aladdin. And there were others. Claudia, Russell, and Phona among them. I don't remember any other names.
I really got going when I got a Let's Play School kit for Christmas. It came with a chalkboard, reward jar (which included some kind of magic trick), a sheet of colored star stickers, laminated attendance tracker, name tags for desks, markers, and more. It was COOL.
I was really rolling now.
The dogs and I had several traditions. Every November, for example, we had a choice of units: families or farms. And I'd always get out the big map book, just like the one we had in kindergarten, to teach them about the continents.
"This is Africa," I said, taking out my dry-erase marker. I'd draw a line through a continent marking two separate landmasses: a circle, and one that pointed straight down. "Every few years, there is a celebration. The top half of Africa separates from the rest of the continent for a few moments, then moves back. It's like an earthquake."
If the doggy parents ever wanted a refund for my lessons, they never let me know it. I imagined that they just hung out outside while waiting for their pups to finish, or else went shopping. Either way, I knew they had the ability to travel quickly.
Golde was definitely my favorite dog. Sometimes her mom would even come in to give talks, on such subjects like geometry or shapes. Obviously you had to thank parents whenever they volunteered to come in, so, I'd have to send notices home as well.
Once we moved to the Oak Road house, I spent a lot of time on the basement computer typing up newsletters and homework assignments. One of these assignments required the dogs to analyze a random pattern of leaves I drew. I would look away while completing those assignments myself, since there were no dogs to do them. I hated doing that. It was reminding myself that they didn't exist---sort of like how I looked away in elementary school while writing my name on my paper if I was imagining that I was a book character.
(Yep. I wasn't just pretending to be Lucille, a side book character I liked. I WAS Lucille, not that I would tell anyone about it.)
Sometimes, I'd just forget. One day I had the brilliant idea to have a party for the dogs, sort of like a Bebe Day party.
"We could have a cake. Or cupcakes," I said, suggesting something easier.
To my horror, Mom said no.
"Why not?" I asked. "We have Bebe Day parties."
"But the dogs aren't real, sweetie," my mom said.
This didn't deter me. The words, however, hit me like a punch. What was I, stupid? Had I forgotten? They were real to me.
We ended up moving a while later, and I continued teaching the dogs in the new basement, too, despite some of us not believing in them. We learned about farms and families. We made art projects with those jumbo art kits I got as holiday gifts. New houses got me thinking, though. I would be driving around and realize, "Ooh, that's *so-and-so's* house." Abutisum lived nearby, while Golde lived across the river in New Jersey. Years later, I was walking with a camp friend in her neighborhood. I couldn't help but look at a particular house and think to myself, "Ooh, that's where Lober lives!"
One night, I even prepared for a graduation event. I made lyrics to the tune of that song, "All God's Critters," learned in Sunday school. My lyrics, though, were about graduation. Then, we'd practice as a group.
It was sad, just like a regular last day of school. I made a long, drawn-out talk about how much I would miss everyone. Because I would! I couldn't just teach the same dogs year after year. That would be cheating. So most of them would go away for good, soon.
***
Dog class, though, actually stemmed from somewhere else.
I won my stuffed dog Barkey at a claw machine on the Jersey shore. We loved that beach arcade, and I would love Barkey for years to come, too. She was black with some brown patches and wore a red collar that said "I Love You." I won an identical dog later on, which I named Tyler. These dogs were best friends and spent every night sleeping in my bed.
I collected many stuffed dogs over time. A pink poodle, named...of course...Pink Poodle. A black poodle from CVS named...Black Poodle. A beanie baby white poodle named Demure. Two white dogs that I named Dinky and Dana, from a birthday party. Spike from Rugrats, even though I didn't like Rugrats, also won at the beach arcade. And so on and so forth.
I eventually started teaching a class of sorts for them, right in my bedroom...probably where I got the idea for my basement class.
It happened on some weekend mornings before I got up. We explored a new theme every day, sort of like Elmo's World. Sometimes the theme was rocks. Other times it was lotion (a famously unpopular theme among the dogs). I'd often demonstrate some kind of craft project as well, like a tissue box where you could carry your things in.
We all loved being together. I'd voice most of the dogs, and together we'd have lively chats. If I got a new dog, we'd sit in a circle and make introductions, similar to what I did with my Barbies.
Another big deal? Birthdays! I got a wall calendar every yearâusually with dogs on it. I would take it to the bed, say, "Calling all dogs! Calling all dogs!" We'd gather round and fill out all the birthdays on the calendar. I still remember that Barkey's was June 10th. I probably made up the others from year to year.
We even planned a beach party once. I don't remember if we had it or not, but we used a "yearbook" I created to write down our grand plans.
We wrote down other things, too. We wrote down predictions for the future. Where would the dogs be in 10 or 20 years? Parfum, for example, would be an actress. Now that we're coming up on the 20-year mark, who knows where they are? Most of them are no longer with me, save for Barkey and Tyler.
One day, several years into teaching dog class, probably past the days of dog class in the bedroom, it was storytime. We all sat on the foam alphabet rug, from which you could cut out the letters, which I'd had since my young childhood. I was reading them a story. The series was called Barkley's School for Dogs---another dog school, if you will. I was reading the words aloud, when I looked around.
I was randomly reading a book out loud all by myself.
This was kind of weird. Also, I was about in third or fourth grade at the time. What was I doing? Was anyone upstairs listening in?
I don't remember many "final" games I played of anything. But I'm pretty sure that was one of my last days of dog class ever. The last day of dog anything ever, really. My self-awareness was overtaking the fact that this was a game I enjoyed. Nothing more than a game. My third-grade classmates were spending time practicing for the travel team and visiting friends. I was teaching a class of dogs that didn't exist.
Mom was right. They weren't real.
That day, a world vanished.
***
I still love dogs. I don't play with stuffed animals anymore, but I always love a cuddle from one of my real dogs. They were a part of my childhood and were very much alive at the time, even if we didn't get to throw a party for them.
And I kind of miss them, too. Sometimes, I'll drive past Abutisum's house, right near the grocery store I frequent, and just wonder...