The Moral of the Story

It has been suggested to me by a few people, including my husband, that giving up Dr. Pepper would make a significant difference in my dieting efforts. For you, I have a little story.

We got Macgregor when I was about 7 years old. He was a West Highland White Terrier. My sister and I loved that dog. He moved with us from town to town, even coming with us when we moved to Germany for a year. He was the sweetest animal, if not the smartest.

One spring day when Mac was about 9, or 65 in dog years, he was sunning himself on our front lawn. I was in my bedroom in the basement when I heard screaming. It took me a minute to realize what I was hearing before I ran upstairs to investigate.

When I got to the front porch, I found my mom on the front lawn screaming while a large Pit Bull pinned our beloved Mac to the ground with his massive jaws around our little dog's neck. The woman who had been walking the Pit Bull stood on the other side of the dogs, yanking on the leash and yelling. To this day, we're not sure what Mac said to bring on the ire of that Pit Bull, but clearly it was something pretty bad.

Anyhoo, we all stood around yelling and waving our arms trying to get the dogs apart. At some point my mom ran into the house. She reappeared a few minutes later with a shotgun in hand. I'm not sure if she planned to shoot the Pit Bull or what, but what she wound up doing was hitting him over the head with it. That Pit Bull didn't even flinch.

About this time, one of my mom's friends, a burly fellow by the name of Red, came walking by. He quickly assessed the situation, picked up what had to be a 50 pound rock from the top of the retaining wall in our yard, walked over and dropped that rock right on the Pit Bull's head. The pit bull released poor little Mac and trotted off like nothing had happened.

Not surprisingly, Mac was in pretty bad shape. He had four nasty puncture wounds in his neck and was just laying on the ground, looking like Doggie Heaven might be calling to him. We rushed him to the vet for emergency care. After several hours of surgery and a gazillion stitches, we brought Mac home. Despite his seemingly life-threatening wounds, Mac made a full recovery and went on to live another 6 years before he left us for the great dog park in the sky. He was a tough little guy and I still miss him.

So, I bet you're thinking that the analogy here is that like Mac, I need to be tough. If that little dog can survive a brutal attack by a trained killer, then I can overcome the hurdle of giving up Dr. Pepper. That's not it, though. The real moral here is that just like that Pit Bull, it would take a big fucking rock to knock the Dr. Pepper out of my steely grasp. I've given up a lot of my favorite addictions in the name of "health," I'm keeping this one.