Never pet a burning dog.

“Look within, Listen, Be Nice” and “Never pet a burning dog” are my two all-time favorite pieces of bathroom graffiti. These words were written right next to each other on the wall to the left of the urinal trough in the best college bar in the history of college bars, The Coug. I read them many, many times. I was always struck by the absurdity of their connection. The duality in their relationship is not unlike many other things in life. Life is filled with light and dark, hard and soft, good and bad. They exist together. They share the same space on bathroom walls and perhaps truly need each other to exist at all. Sunny days in Seattle are always more sunny because they follow gray days. This duality must exist for us to have anything of value.


The other night my wife and I were having a very serious discussion. We were talking urgently about the usual un-fun topics of money, plans, bills, the future, the laundry list of things I was doing wrong, etc. While deep in the heat of the intense conversation, I noticed that on my right index finger I was, not consciously, yet quite deliberately, twirling a piece of fake dog poop. I tuned out of the conversation for a moment, hoping my wife wouldn’t notice me playing with a fake turd during our important talk, and pondered how life IS this duality and how sometimes, in our worst moments, we are our best and how humor and joy exist even in the most serious circumstances. I began to feel that, though our conversation about “stuff” was significant, it was not everything. Few things are everything. Family and friends are the only items I can think of, that qualify to me. Yet, a lot of emphasis is placed on things that don’t and won’t ever matter.

Our world is filled with bad stuff happening. We have wars, oil spills, sucky economies, and lots of bad people doing bad things. This is sometimes overwhelming and disheartening. But as I looked out my lighthouse home office window the other morning and glanced into my neighbor’s yard and witnessed him dressed head to toe in his raingear, sitting on his lawnmower cutting his grass in a downpour, I was happy. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and was smiling. At this same time, I noticed his two year old daughter playing nearby with dirt in her mouth and flowers in her hair. She was wearing a pink puffy dress that she swiftly removed before she squatted and peed in her dad’s freshly mown lawn.

It is very easy to get lost in all the bad news that chokes us daily, however, I think that as long as carefree little neighbor girls exist that will stand in the rain and whiz in the yard, we’re gonna be ok.