Is This Real Life?

Lexi is seen here going out her front door, something she does five or six times a day, usually bouncing down the steps, lustily greeting the only neighborhood she has known in her six years on the planet. This morning, however, she was befuddled. Everything seemed … different, somehow. Suspicious. Her eyes narrowed.

Lexi was heroically intoxicated. Rubber-legged. Stupefied.

She was being taken to the veterinarian to have blood drawn for a routine heartworm test. The overnight sedation was imperative because this ordinarily amiable and affectionate animal is scared shitless of the vet, and becomes a savage, snarling, gnashing biting brainless automaton when touched.

Anyway, she was stoned out of her mini-mind. Here she is getting into the car:

I am writing this trivial column because there is a profound psychological insight coming. But first you have to know what happened at the vet.

Lexi groggily listed to the left on the walk from the car to the clinic, twice veering in front of me, getting kneed in the butt. She was muzzled. We walked to the vet’s backyard, so she wouldn’t get upset by seeing other animals. There, two cheerful techs waited in the pleasant morning sun, bootlegging syringes and making soothing noises. We had a container of fried shrimp to distract and delight her. The operation had been choreographed like the Bolshoi.

Lexi took this all in, and somehow figured out, in her stupor, that something was up. And the stupor departed. Ten minutes later, after the wild melee, four panting people gave up. Fortunately, no blood was shed. Unfortunately, no blood was collected. The instant the techs departed, defeated, the dog went back to serious stuporing.

As I write this, Lexi is back home, bathed in sunlight, comatose at my feet, beside her favorite stuffie. Five feet away, Grandpa the Horrible Hissing Momma Cat settled into a hunting crouch, eyes slitted, plotting against her arch nemesis, who she suddenly sensed was weakened and … Vulnerable.

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Here’s the profound psychological point: Fear is the strongest emotion. It overwhelms and overcomes everything else. It is elemental — the nervous system is programmed to respond to fear even before conscious thought. Fear has been called “the mother of all emotions” because it is said to be the driving force behind most human actions — either directly or subconsciously.

I have postulated that we are what we fear — that our personalities are formed in reaction to the things we are most terrified of.

Obligatory Trump paragraph:

Fear is so powerful, it is the principal tool of autocrats. Hermann Goering said as much, interviewed in his prison cell at Nuremberg. Whether you are talking about a dictatorship or a democracy, he said, “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked . . . It works the same way in any country.”

Anyway, fear sobered Lexi right up. Our love and kindness had had no effect on it. Nor did shrimp.

We’ve made an appointment to bringLexi back another day, where she will be given a shot to knock her not just stupid, but out. And then they’ll take her blood, cut her nails, express her anal glands (don’t ask) and do anything else that hasn’t been done in the last five years because she is a screaming meemie. (Alas, this is necessary. She’s out of heartworm meds, and you must be tested before they are renewed, because if an animal IS infected, the meds might prove fatal.)

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Did you notice that Lexi is a little chunky? Did you notice that Grandpa is a lot chunky? Did you notice that I am not so much anymore?

A day after Herman Tarnower, a famous diet doctor, was shot to death by his lover in 1980, the New York Post ran a rather vicious, gloating page one story based on the autopsy report. “Diet Doc Was Overweight!” it said, as I recall. At death, Tarnower was five foot ten and weighed 172 pounds, and, technically, that was one pound over the threshold for “overweight.”

At the time I was five foot ten and 172 pounds, and I remember feeling both angry and uneasy. In the intervening years, I steadily, gradually, got all the way to 200, at which point I called my doctor and went GLP.

After five months, I’m now at 172 pounds. I am happy to be there. But I’m reminded that whatever size you are, you can always be hit by a bus, or a bullet, tomorrow. I’m being very nice to Rachel.

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There are two powerful stories in today’s MS.NOW by former Washington Post writers. You should read them.

The first is by Glenn Kessler, The Post’s brainy erstwhile Fact Checker. It is a devastating takedown of the career of Donald Trump’s Liar In Chief, Karoline Leavitt. It is here.

The second is by a different former Washington Post writer.

That story is here.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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And finally, you should become my boss. I’d appreciate it. Also, it will help keep Rachel happy.