“God damn it fucking Lola!” I hear out my window and look to see a young blonde girl running barefoot down the middle of the street. I don’t know who or what Lola is.
I see the young girl disappear between two houses, then a small, grayish dog shoots out from the between them and begins running back toward our house. I recognize it as the neighbor’s dog from two doors down.
The dog runs back toward the house where another girl’s voice is calling it in a more playful, fun tone. The dog slows. The blonde girl runs faster, screams, “Fucking dog!” The dog starts to run away from her. (She doesn’t understand the dog thinks she’s playing, and will continue to run as long as it’s chased; the dog is being a dog, while the human thinks the dog should be a human. Who’s the dumb one in this scenario?)
There is a dark-haired girl to whom the dog has run, the one calling the dog in a nice way. She scoops the dog up and holds it in her arms. The blonde girl screams down the street, “Beat the fucking shit out of that dog’s ass!”
I’m sickened at hearing that. I panic for the welfare of the dog, and feel like I have to say something, anything to try to intervene. “That’s not the right response for a dog that comes back to you,” I say out the window.
“Fuck that shit! Fucking beat that stupid dog!” the girl screams.
“Or for the neighborhood to hear,” I say as I see another neighbor’s two young children standing out on the sidewalk, hearing all of this.
“Shut the fuck up!” she screams at me as she passes by. She grabs the dog from the dark-haired girl and stomps up the porch and into the house, out of sight.
I don’t know if the dog got beat or not, but I sure felt like the rest of us did.
