Dog
Day
by Duen Hsi Yen from
From his "Malama Learning Facility"
John and his wife Jean were having an argument at the dinner table. This is what was
happening. John had served himself some sliced bananas with vanilla ice cream over it for
dessert. As he was getting to the end and finishing it off, he encountered a problem:
there was a layer of banana rounds on the flat dessert plate, in some melted ice cream. He
was trying to scoop them up with his spoon, but they would slide to the end of the plate,
and then he knew if he pushed any further, they would fall onto the table. Now the first
solution that came to his mind was to put his index finger against the sliding banana
round, holding it steady so that the spoon could slide underneath. He quickly rules that
out because he doesn't want to get his fingers sticky with ice cream. You know that
feeling. When ice cream gets on your fingers, you have to get up and wash your hands off,
because it is impossible to remove the stuff off with just a plain paper napkin. The
napkin just tears and then that too gets stuck to your fingers.
So what he decides to do is lower his head to the table, and slide the banana off the
plate neatly into his mouth. Jean sees this, and maybe she is having a dog day, so she
speaks up sharply, and says,
"Only dogs eat like that!"
John fell silent. He could feel the tension rising, since she has nagged him before about
some of his other manners.
"You're not a dog," she says next.
"Wooof! Woooof!" he says, attempting some weak humor.
Silence.
"Bow wow!"
This response did not please her. So then they start to argue.
"Well, I do know what good table manners are. Do you ever see me eat like this in a
restaurant?" John says defensively.
"No, but I'm trying to have a nice pleasant dinner, and I find it distressing to see
you eat like this," Jean scolds.
John is recalcitrant. Perhaps scolding shifts your frame of reference to younger days.
Transactional analysis frames the interaction as between parent and child. Jean is the
parent, John is the child. John falls into the familiar pattern of reacting as a child. He
starts to reason:
"Well, we are not in a restaurant," he intones. "We are at home, and can't
we relax the rules. No one is going to see us. There are no guests." This line of
reasoning fails to mollify her.
"You're not a dog. You are a human being. Only dogs eat like that," asserts his
wife.
John is very good at arguing. He is a scientific researcher. Like lightening, he applies
mathematical logic to the problem, and tries to think of exceptions to this rule. In what
cases can a human being eat off of a plate like a dog.
"Well, I could be a thalidomide baby," are the next words that stumble from his
mouth.
For those who remember, thalidomide was an anti-nausea agent. Unfortunately, when given to
pregnant women, it had the tragic side effect of causing a grotesque birth defect: the
babies were born without arms or legs, and only had hands or feet sticking out where the
limbs would be.
"I wonder how they eat. Wouldn't they have to eat the same way as I did?" he
continues. His mind races on. Like a squid trying to outwit its rival, it squirts a jet of
black ink, hoping to escape by reducing the visibility to zero:
"And come to think of it, most animals eat this way. Cats, cows, birds, indeed, I
cannot think of any exceptions except monkeys, which are like us anyway." Pause.
"Oh yes, I can think of one now: raccoons. Raccoons wash their food and hold the food
with their paws when they eat." "Anyway, if the majority of the creatures in the
animal kingdom do it, then why not I?" he smugly says, satisfied with the weight of
his argument.
At this point, something happens. In psychology, its called a content to process shift. So
far John has been in content mode. To shift to process, is like an out-of-body experience.
Part of your mind steps out and views the whole panorama of the situation, like a flying
bird, and sees that this argument is ludicrous. It is a mystery as to how it happens, It's
like when you look at a Necker
cube, and it shifts from looking from one way to another. Or like the optical illusion
of the old hag-young women,
you see one, then the other, but not both at the same time. Its a paradigm shift, and in
the realm of this family's dynamics, it is as momentous as the Copernican revolution. It
just somehow happens.
He starts to laugh. He finally sees her point of view, that it does look rather funny to
be eating off of a plate like this. After all, this is expensive Wedgewood china, the
Oceanside pattern. It is beautiful china. It has a scalloped edge in a seashell motif. The
china is a translucent white color, so when you hold it up to the light, you can see a
beautiful pattern of sea shells ringing the plate. And the tableware is also of high
quality, from William's and Sonoma, 18/10 is branded on the stainless steel, a mark of
quality. John now sees the situation more clearly. Here he is, trying to eat off of fine
china like a dog. He starts to laugh with this picture in mind. The incongruity! This is
what his wife is seeing! She is trying to imagine a more romantic setting. He is now
starting to emit loud guffaws. He can't stop. She starts to giggle too. Perhaps you, the
reader, have already been laughing, because you have had the process point of view all
along. You can see the wife's point of view better than John could, until that moment.
So his laughter defuses the argument. They can continue with the earlier conversation, but
in a more relaxed mode. His wife mentions that she was watching a nature show just before
dinner:
"It seems so natural that the calf could suckle at the mother cow's teats in such an
easy manner, as if they are perfectly matched," she says.
He is agreeable, and says in a gentler tone of voice, comforted that the thundershower has
passed:
"Yes, they are perfectly matched. What if the calf were too short? Then it couldn't
reach the mother's udder and then it would starve, and that would be the end of
cows," he muses. "But maybe not." He puts some more thought into the problem
and then says "Maybe the cow could kneel or lie down on its side to nurse the calf,
like other animals." ......., "But then this would leave it open to predators,
since it is especially hard for a cow to quickly get back up on its feet."
"Yes," he softly says, "It is perfect."
Copyright ©
1999 by Duen Hsi Yen, All
rights reserved. E-mail: yen@noogenesis.com
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