Cynics Unlimited

As a great lover of Canis lupus (scientific Latin name for dog), being called lower than a dog isn’t necessarily an insult to me, but this story bears telling. My aunt lives on a farm with a number of animals, including several dogs. Two of them are a “couple,” a male and female dog whom I’ll call Sam (boy) and Sandy (girl). Apparently when my aunt fills the dogs’ bowl with their food, Sam always waits patiently until Sandy has had her share before he starts eating himself.

I was mentioning this to a co-worker, a very nice Black woman who knitted a sweater for my daughter when I became pregnant. “What a gentleman!” my colleague exclaimed about Sam.

So I felt compelled to tell her this story. I recounted how once when I went to dinner at the apartment of a Lebanese man I was dating I made the main meal (Italian pasta with homemade tomato sauce, I remember). Afterward, he told me with a smile to wash the dishes, which I proceeded to do.

Now I brought up the story first of all to illustrate how primitive and uncultured such behaviour was (inviting someone else to your home and having them do the dishes, especially when THEY have made the effort to prepare the meal) but mostly for the laughs, to show how a dog could actually be more of a gentleman than a human male. Well, she didn’t laugh; she got enraged. “I hope you didn’t do the dishes!” she said angrily. I looked a little sheepish and said yes, I did, which made her even more upset. At this point I started laughing, not at the story but at her and the fact she got so angry.

So all in all, going back to the Sam-Sandy story, is it fair to say this “gentleman” I was seeing was lower than a dog?

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