My parents have always called me the pot-stirrer. What they mean, in family shorthand, is that I don’t like things too settled. If the soup that is my life looks a little too clear, I stir the pot and muddy things up.
I usually feel justified in my pot-stirring. Change is what keeps life interesting! But this latest swirl of the soup surprised even me. During this most eventful season of my life, on top of moving into a new house, selling the old one and starting graduate school, I felt the need to get a dog.
I didn’t undertake this endeavor alone. I had accomplices: my kids. And I needed them, because I was up against Mr. T.
The original Mr. T, you may remember, was a character on the forgettable eighties show The A Team. A giant black man known for his muscles, gold jewelry, and mohawk hairdo, Mr. T had a trademark phrase: “I pity the fool who…” Then he would describe the foolish acts of whoever had committed the act that aroused the contempt of Mr. T.
We call my husband Mr. T, but not for any physical resemblance (except his fairly large biceps). No, Mark earned the nickname through his psychological type. In the Meyers-Briggs personality profiles that I’ve written about previously, Mark and I are on opposite ends of the Thinking vs. Feeling, or T vs. F, continuum. Like any good pot-stirrer, I make decisions based on feelings, so I’m an F. Mark makes decisions based on facts… and he “pities the fool” who doesn’t! He’s all T. That’s Mister T.
Mr. T had lots of logical reasons not to get a dog. The pot-stirrer had only one reason to go ahead and get one: the kids and I really, really had the feeling that we wanted one! We were at an impasse. During our two-week stand-off, with dogs on my mind, I asked Mark’s mother about pets they’d had when Mark was a child. She smiled, remembering each of her three children’s bond to the dog, little Lucy.
“Oh, Philip was so attached to Lucy,” she recalled. “And Karen, she just loved that dog! And Mark…” She paused and seemed to be struggling to picture Mark interacting with Lucy, then went on half-heartedly. “Well, he…liked the dog.” Ah, the young Mr. T — he pitied the fool who could love a creature that never grows up to take care of itself, a creature that interrupts your sleep, a creature that eats shoes!
But the thing that keeps this pot-stirrer happy is that, just sometimes, my Mr. T will give the pot a little stir himself. And it happened! Suddenly, against his better judgment, Mark agreed to bring home Toby, a retired greyhound.
What a great dog! He’s all settled in and things are getting calm. Maybe a little too calm. I’m thinking about a second greyhound…but not quite yet. In fact, I pity the fool who would try to slip that one past Mr. T so soon. I may be an F, but it doesn’t stand for fool!
As always, thanks so much for reading Our Town!