Tag: laugh

While Fleegle and I sit on a park bench reading in the sun, a man with a cane takes a seat at the far end of the bench and starts reading a newspaper. Fleegle quietly gets up, goes over and sits next to him, but without paying him any attention. Anyone walking by would think Fleegle belonged to the man with the cane and not to me.

After a little while, Fleegle gets up and moves back next to me.

“What was that about?” I ask.

“I was just reminding you of what it was like before you got me. I bet you saw me sitting over there and went, boy, I wish I had a dog like that, so good looking and kind.”

I get up and move to the next park bench.

“What are you doing?” Fleegle asks.

“Just a reminder.”

Fleegle glances at the man with the cane, absorbed reading his newspaper. “I don’t think he’s going to wish he had human just like you. You’re not nearly as good looking or kind.”

Next Negotiating with Cookies: Telekinesis

Previous Negotiating with Cookies: Cell Phones

“That @#$%& cat!” Fleegle grumbles as he come through his dog door with Georgina, his chicken, sitting on his head.

“Hey, watch your swearing,” I say.

“How? It’s not steaming in here. I can’t see my breath.”

“Where’d you learn that kind of language anyway?”

He tilts his head to the side. “From you in the car when you talk to your imaginary friend, Timmy.”

“Timid Timmy? Well, stop using those words.”

“Why? I like the way they sound.”

“Do you want Georgina to pick them up from you and start spouting them off left and right? Hey you, fat Lab, where the F-@#$%&! are my Chickie Puffs?”

He tilts his head to the other side. “Not when you put it like that, but you’ve given me an idea. Hey you, big belly on legs, it’s lunchtime. Where the F-@#$%&! is my kibble?”

Next Negotiating with Cookies: Cell Phones

Previous Negotiating with Cookies: Career Day

I leap over fallen trees and across rushing streams, running as fast as I can through the woods, and for some reason unknown to me I’m running on all fours, but instead of it being awkward, I’m faster than I’ve ever been. Then I see that my hands aren’t hands but paws–paws covered in chocolate brown fur–and come to a skidding halt on the forest floor.

I’m entirely covered in the same fur and I’ve the body of a Labrador. I glance at my reflection in a puddle and my human face looks back at me with a Labrador crew cut, but that’s the least of my worries. My reflection is off of a puddle of liquid chocolate which can mean only one thing. I’m in Fleegle World again.

As I gaze about me at the trees made of chocolate, Fleegle ambles up the creek bank, chewing on a stick. My guess is that it’s a chocolate stick. He reads my mind when he sees me. “Mint chocolate, keeps my breath fresh, not that I care but I’ve picked up a few things from People World,” he says. “I almost didn’t recognize you, but then you turned your head and I saw your face. You’ve got more than just a tail this time. I wonder why that is?”

“What happened to that syrupy ocean and the Chocolate Rockies?”

“In Fleegle World, that’s like asking what happens to the light when it turns night. Come on, let’s go.”

I follow Fleegle on a path that runs along the bank of the stream. “Where are we headed?”

“Fleegleville. You’ll be able to see it soon.”

When we clear the woods the trail opens onto a vast manicured lawn of the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. It’s so perfect I paw at it to make sure it’s not Astroturf.

“You never need to mow that,” Fleegle says, nodding at the grass as I rub my paw over it. It’s as soft as felt.

In the distance sits a large house. The ranch style shape and blue-grey color is familiar. Then I realize it’s our house, the house Fleegle and I live in back in People World, but supersized as if you were to build an exact replica of it but make it the size of the Rose Bowl. “Fleegleville is our house?”

“It’s the capitol of the world, the funnest place in Fleegle World, maybe even in the whole Fleegleverse, full of cookies and fun.”

Next Negotiating with Cookies: Career Day

Previous Negotiating with Cookies: Writer’s Block

I’m sitting at my desk, glaring at the blank page in my spiral notebook and pulling at my hair with both hands, when Fleegle flip-flaps through his dog door. “Ooo-ooo, do that to my fur. I love scalp massages.” He comes over and leans against my leg. “Please.”

I continue pulling at my hair with my left hand, but use my right hand to scratch Fleegle’s head. “Oh, boy, you deserve a biscuit for this,” he says.

Normally I would respond by commenting that he wants me to have a biscuit because he knows I would share, but when I remain quiet, he looks up at my sour expression and sees my grumpy demeanor and asks, “What’s wrong, Raud?”

“I’ve got writer’s block.”

“Oh, can I have one. You know how I like to chew on wood. It is wood isn’t it?”

“Very dense wood.”

“Good. Where is it?”

“Inside my head.”

“Umm… It might hurt getting it out. How’d you get it inside there? Did you swallow it?”

I shake my head. “No, I imagined it.”

“Like the imaginary friend you swear at in the car when the lights turn red?”

“Something like that.”

“You need to get a green light for your desk. Click it on and I bet it would make your block go away. It works on your imaginary friend.”

Next Negotiating with Cookies: Fleegleville

Previous Negotiating with Cookies: Timid Timmy