The Pet

My brother brought in a wild time. “Mom, can we please keep it?” “Only if you’re prepared to walk it, feed it, and clean up after it.”

Walking it never felt quite right. We put a leash on it, spoke commands firmly, asserted our position as the alpha, but no matter how much we tried, it always felt like it was walking us.

It ate most unpredictably. Any feeding schedule we attempted to implement was quickly overrun by its hunger or abandoned by its lack thereof. We had no control over how busy or barren it’s mealtimes would be.

It was impossible to clean up after it. We had to clean up before it by preventing the mess before it became cemented in its past.

One night, after several years, it killed mom in her sleep. She was getting old. There was nothing we could have done to stop it.

Years later, my brother studied and became a drummer. He never got any gigs though. In auditions, people would always ask him, “Can you keep time?”