My Dog is Chelsea

Sorry about all the confusion. I changed the color scheme, and then realized how putridly horrific it was, and changed it back without deleting that last post. Anyway, I posted this story a few days ago (Tim, no, you were not hallucinating), and then decided I didn’t like it (much like the color scheme debacle) and so I de-posted it. I’m re-posting it now, for no reason other than people in Santa Fe still talk too much:

The common theme I am discovering about Santa Feans is that they all feel the need to unload their entire life story on yours truly. Just this morning, I met my neighbor, Roger (name changed to protect my identity from him) who did exactly this, and all I did to provoke it was introduce myself as his new neighbor.

It all started when I went outside with the intention of letting Chelsea pee on the grass instead of my bed. Not expecting a run-in with a long-talker, I was still clad in my pajamas.

Evidently, Roger moved from L.A. nine months ago. He has a 21-year-old son who has four dogs, one cat, and two gekkos. Roger thought his son needed to be out on his own, so he moved out to Santa Fe to teach his son how to take care of himself, he explained: “I miss the dogs you know, especially the little pit bull, but I knew it was time to let my son grow up.”

Roger works at a juvenile correctional facility as a guidance counselor, has no dogs, and shares his apartment with his friend John. Coincidentally, I also had a long-winded run-in with John on Saturday morning when he knocked on my door. Again, I was still in my pajamas, but this time I didn’t even have my glasses on. I was blind as a bat when I opened the door, but I could just make out the gold-leafed pages of a Bible in his hand.

“Hi, I’m John, and I wanted to talk to you about world peace,” he said.

I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet, let alone finished making a pot of coffee.

“I’m sorry, this isn’t really a good time for me,” I said, looking down at my tank top, which was stretched out from sleeping and was sagging a little too low, if you know what I mean. Crap, I thought, I’m about to flash a Jehovah’s Witness.

“Well I just wanted to know if you can imagine a world without poverty. Do you want the world to look like this?” He pointed to a picture on a pamphlet.

To my uncorrected eyes, the picture looked like a giant colorful blur. “Sure I do,” I said. “But I really don’t have time to talk about it right now.”

At this moment, Chelsea caught whiff of the Bible thumper and came to the door.

She barked. A lot. Normally, this behavior embarrasses me, but I really wasn’t ready to get into a full-on discussion about world peace when I was blind and half-naked. I half-heartedly reprimanded her (little did John know that she’s deaf) and she just kept on barking. Meanwhile, John kept on blabbing, and it wasn’t until my howling dog took a vaguely menacing step towards him that John finally shut up.

“Have a good day,” he said shakily, and tossed the pamphlet with the colorful blob at me and ran off down the stairs to wake up somebody else. Apparently, Roger, who has an affinity for pit bulls, lives with a man who is afraid of elderly Springer Spaniels.

Roger and John are not the only examples of long-winded New Mexicans. There was Felix, my new friend with a pickup truck, for instance, and just the other day I met a woman at the dog park who gave me the details about every hiking trail in the region. Her long, Joni Mitchell gray hair blew about in the breeze as she looked off towards the mountains she described.

The abridged version:

“That one has a creek. That one is steep. That one is sunny. That one is shady. That one is easily accessible. That one is hard to find. My dog ran for two hours today. I’m from Spain originally. That one is my favorite. Santa Fe is beautiful. Watch out for rattlesnakes. I moved here eight years ago. That one has rattlesnakes. That one has a great view. Before I lived here I was living in California. Santa Fe is better.”

What I can’t decide is whether or not this affinity for speaking stems from friendliness or loneliness. Perhaps it is a combination of the two. And while I appreciate the courtesy and welcoming hand my fellow residents are extending to me, it is somewhat depressing. Since when did “I just moved here from New York City” become code words for “Please tell me everything about yourself, world peace, and the Santa Fe area”? I usually get little more than a “Yep, uh-uh” or “I know what you mean” into these conversations — even though I obviously have no idea what these people mean at all.

Oh well, it’s not like I have anything better to do. I mean, I could be perusing the pamphlet about world peace,* but I guess I’d rather hear about why Joni moved here from Spain all those years ago. Besides, if it weren’t for her, I could have come across a rattlesnake and thought it was the friendly kind and tried to pet it or something. It’s not like I would know better. I just moved here from New York City, after all.

* In case you were wondering, upon closer inspection, I noted that the blurry picture showed a black family wearing doo-rags sitting down to eat a luscious meal, while a blonde-haired, khaki-donning white family is approaching carrying several other luscious dishes. The mother of the black family is extending a welcoming arm to the white family, and everyone is smiling. They are eating at a picnic table that is surrounded by the most beautiful and excessive flowers in the world, and in the background, two deer are drinking from a waterful, and a few pink flamingoes are grazing in a pond. Because, obviously, this is the most realistic way to envision a world without poverty.