I know, I know – it’s like how a parent’s life can become largely an orbit around anything and everything to do with their child. That’s how it probably seems with every second post here; all Rumble all the time, and I’m sure it gets old in a hurry if you’re not a dog person. I promise, Rum is a secondary character in this story, and the central focus is the end of the world. That’s always fun, right? So stick around, this’ll be good.
Really quick, to set the back story: Rum’s on a diet so he can get on the plane with us to Ontario next month. He’s getting rice cake bits as treats, which he loves. We were out of rice cakes yesterday, so he got a bit of Rice Krispies in with his dog food. Because of this, he’s had the Tijuana Squitters for the last 18 hours. No more Rice Krispies for Rumble, and everyone’s up to speed now.
Because of his iffy stomach, Rumble slept on the bed last night, and I’m glad he did- he jumped on us at 3am or so because he really needed to go out. Jeff was wrecked and walks him 80% of the time so I hauled on my shorts and a hoodie and grabbed his leash while Rum danced around nervously.
Right away, things were sideways from the usual. When the elevator doors opened to take us down, there were three people already on, drunk out of their skulls, just kind of standing there. The buttons were all dark, so I pressed the G and we headed towards the lobby. One of the Drunkies was confused and said they were headed up, and when I explained how someone’s gotta buzz you in, he just said, “bah!” The other Drunkies were leaning on each other and ignoring our conversation, and when the dog and I exited at the lobby, the three of them stayed in the elevator, which stayed on the ground floor.
That was the weird thing – they didn’t say anything to each other, they didn’t exit the elevator, which wasn’t going anywhere, and they didn’t press any buttons; they just stood there, silently, not doing anything. It was immensely creepy.
When we left the lobby and went outside, there was a gaggle of drunk kids huddled in a little group, hollering, shoving each other around and generally being obnoxious – I think that’s why the dog woke up, more from the noise than anything. These kids weren’t actually saying anything specific, just kind of hooting and stumbling into each other, which when you’re smashed enough is apparently a really good time..
I walked Rumble down Expo to the park, where he proceeded to have the evilest of evil calls of nature, and gave him a few extra minutes to make sure it was all out of his system. Andy Livingstone Park has a bunch of signs saying the park’s closed at night and that it’s patrolled by a guard and a guard dog at night, but nobody even bothers to laugh at that joke anymore. There were people on the benches smoking weed, and a guy was sitting on the kids’ jungle gym shooting up. Nobody was saying anything that I could hear, just a general grunting and muttering.
I shave my head and have numerous visible tattoos, and I’ve been, in a half-assed way, working out for a long time now. While I try to be generally positive, open and friendly to people, I can with a little effort look like someone with whom you’d not care to fuck mess, (Grammar! Love it!) And when needed, I can exude the “try anything and I’ll rip your arm off and beat you to death with it” pheromone. I think that’s the only reason Rum and I got home unmolested at 3:20am this morning. Rumble wasn’t helping, doing his whole “ooh, that guy over there just barfed, I’m sure it smells interesting, let’s go there!” thing.
Long story short, when I was young I hung out with friends, drinking until the early hours and generally making a fool of myself, which is standard behaviour for most people until you grow up and give your head a shake. The thing is, I live on the corner of Behavioural Issues Street & Substance Abuse Boulevard, where the people who like to shoot up, get drunk and/or stab each other tend to congregate. Even the relatively “normal” people who live in my building can do stuff that will, in the early hours of Sunday morning, cause them to turn into extras from Night Of The Living (I’m Gonna Have Such A Hangover Tomorrow I’ll Wish I was) Dead.
I got Rumble back to our building unscathed and barked at the idiots doing their drunken Zombie Mob thing outside the door to get the hell out of our way and got us back into our house with no further incident. The dog was asleep again as soon as his furry lil’ head hit the bed, but I stayed up for another half hour or so, doing seller searches on eBay for Tasers and wondering when I became the crotchety old guy who, if he had a lawn would tell these punks to get off of it…
PS: The fact that we saw Resident Evil: Apocalypse earlier that night has nothing to do with colouring my perceptions here. Just coincidence. Honest.
PPS: Resident Evil: Apocalypse is one of the shittiest crappiest movies you’ll ever have the misfortune of seeing. Go see the remake of Dawn Of The Dead. Huge difference.
BTW, the whole “strikeover” thing you see here and there? It’s because my mom yelled at me for all the profanity in my posts. I know, the irony hasn’t eluded me either.
