A funny thing happened on my way to my advanced Yiddish lessons yesterday. You don’t really expect this sort of stuff to happen in a sleepy town down south, but it did. I swear. Ma didn’t let me grow up to be a liar.
I was walking down the road, bag in hand and mumbling Yiddish verbs under my breath when, all of a sudden, a big shaggy dog ran across the road in front of me. Knowing me I screamed and almost fell over, but that wasn’t the end of it. A man was chasing after the dog (guess he was the owner?) and tripped right in front of me. He was muttering words Ma would skin me if I repeated under his breath and shaking his fist at the dog. By now, though, it was halfway to Timbuktu. That mister wasn’t getting his dog back. Nooo siree.
“Eh, you best leave off, mistah,” I said while offering a hand. He ignored me and got up all on his lonesome, giving me the evil eye now. “Hey! Ain’t my fault yer dog runned away. Gotta keep a tighter hand on ‘is leash.”
He glanced at the waving golden wheat and shrugged half-heartedly. Poor mister. “Nah, don’ think yer getting that there dog back either way. ‘E’s long gone.”
The man grumbled and brushed off his pants before turning to stare at the direction his ole doggy had run off to. “I don’t suppose there’s a thank you in order here, since you didn’t try to stop Smokey.”
“Gosh, yer stuffy.”
Then he walked off into the field of wheat, probably chasing his dog in a fool’s errand. Sometimes I do wonder about those fancy-talkin’ northerners, but as Ma would say: “It ain’t yer place to judge othas ‘til you’ve lived in them there shoes.”
So that was that strange event. I don’t know why the man was there, or why his dog was running, but I s’pose they’re long gone by now.
Maybe they’re even in Timbuktu.
