A New Year’s Tale

This really happened. One year, right after Christmas, my mom decided to drive herself, my little sister and me up to North Carolina to see snow. As native Floridians, my sister and I had never seen snow before. We complained bitterly about this fact, especially during the holidays when all the TV specials featured snowmen, sleigh rides, etc.

This was a very long time ago, back when people drove ugly green station wagons with fake wood paneling. Anyhoo, we had a little dog—a poodle mix of some sort. He was a kind of goldish color, so we named him Butterscotch. But we all called him Scotch.

We couldn’t take Scotch with us since we were staying with dog-phobic relatives in North Carolina. So my mom asked her younger sister to housesit and watch after Scotch. Auntie agreed to do this for us and promised to take good care of our beloved pet:

Poor Auntie had to spend New Year’s Eve all by herself. However, my mom had generously given Auntie permission to raid the liquor cabinet. She polished off a few cocktails and then rang in the New Year watching Dick Clark on TV as she lounged in our recliner and finished an entire bottle of champagne:

As the next morning dawned, Auntie blearily awoke and immediately noticed something was missing:

She looked all over the house, but she couldn’t find him. Then she remembered that we had a doggie door in the back of the house. She thought maybe Scotch had let himself out. She looked out the window into the empty back yard. Then she noticed the hole in the fence:

Now Auntie was in a full-fledged panic. She knew how much we loved our little dog. Horrifying scenes played through her mind—finding Scotch run over in the street and having to break the news to us. She ran out into the front yard and called Scotch repeatedly at the top of her voice:

But he didn’t come. She ran into the house and grabbed his doggie dish, thinking maybe if he saw it, he would come to her. She walked up and down the streets in our neighborhood, holding out a silver dish and screaming SCOTCH!!! The neighbors were not impressed:

After an hour or so of this, with cranky, hung-over neighbors jeering at her from every window, Auntie walked back home, dejected. She wondered how on earth she was going to tell her beloved little nieces that she’d become intoxicated and misplaced their pet.

But when she got to our yard, Scotch was waiting:

THE END

Posted by Betty Cracker on 01/01/11 at 01:22 PM • Permalink

Categories: Booze • Critters •

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Aw, I do love a happy ending!

Comment by Oblomova on 01/01/11 at 02:04 PM

I was holding my breath until the end. Glad it was happy.

Comment by asiangrrlMN on 01/01/11 at 06:51 PM

P.S. Nice drawings!

Comment by asiangrrlMN on 01/01/11 at 06:52 PM

A lovely & heartwarming tale.

Thank you for sharing.

& HNY.

Comment by zhak on 01/01/11 at 07:27 PM

Now that is the greatest story ever told.

Comment by Hunger Tallest Palin on 01/01/11 at 07:43 PM

OMG! You could see where this was going. It’s hysterical. I wonder if your aunt still gets ribbed about this. It’s a great “you won’t believe my family” story.

Comment by Joy on 01/01/11 at 08:00 PM

That was THE best story. Thanks, Betty dearest.

Comment by gimmeabreak on 01/01/11 at 09:20 PM

I wonder if the neighbors would have been more accommodating if you had shortened his name to Butter?

Comment by Allan on 01/01/11 at 10:19 PM

After panel 6 I was kinda expecting self-loathing, prostitution, cutting, multiple substances being abused, questionable videos intended for a primarily German audience, etc.

But then I scrolled down and it all turned out okay.

I really need to lighten up and get over my “the glass is half full of scheisse videos” fixation IRT pet-sitting relatives.

We all have our crosses to bear.

Comment by de stijl on 01/02/11 at 05:40 AM

de stijl, are you by any chance of German descent? Have you read Drama of the Gifted Child? Not for the therapeutic aspects, but simply for a description of Germanic pedagogy that just about explains everything since Martin Luther, and possibly before—he was just another elimination-obsessed German mofo, turns out.

My father’s side of the family were Austrian and German, and when he was a child, he thought grandparents were people who when you visited them, gave you enemas. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have missed them, and they me,and my sympathies to you if you didn’t have the same luck.

Well now, Betty, that completes the devolution of your wonderful story and sets a tone for the New Year that at least won’t be impossibly hard to maintain!

Comment by Mrs. Polly on 01/02/11 at 10:45 AM

Mrs P - Your great-grandparents’ idea of a good time was to give their grandchildren an enema!?! Why, when a good rope-burn and a wedgie would be so lacking in messiness in comparison. Are you SURE they were Austro-German? Happy New Year to all, and to all a good plunge off your nearest high-suspension bridge in this most blessed of new years.

Comment by ms YAFB on 01/02/11 at 06:50 PM

Mrs. Polly,

Not of German descent. Half Swedish, though.

This is a real-life true story and a bit borderline embarrassing, so discretion, please.

A few weeks ago I had a GI problem that would not resolve itself no matter how much internal pressure I brought to bear. Eventually, I had to resort to manual intervention which was fairly traumatic. I didn’t have the proper supplies on hand so I had to jury rig lubricants and poop-breaker-uppers (can’t think of the right phrase here). After ruining a perfectly good tooth brush (or least, its handle) and forever scarring myself IRT liquid hand soap, I reluctantly realized that it wasn’t going to resolve the situation, so I had to, um, go digital. Sorry for the visual, y’all. Half an hour later all was thankfully resolved.

Next time I went grocery shopping I had to pick up fairly embarrassing supplies in case constipation reared its ugly head again. On top of of the latex gloves and lube and suppositories, I also got the home enema kit.

Now I’m the type of person who seeks out new experiences and part of me kind of wishes I’d bought two kits, because I’ve never had an enema before. I assume it’s kind of nasty, but then you also read about how “cleansing” Hollywood types feel about their colonics, so now I’m kind of intrigued.

But then I read the directions on the back of the box and I got over it.

It will sit in an obscure drawer in the bathroom until it is needed - hopefully never.

This was the strangest blog comment I’ve ever written.

Comment by de stijl on 01/02/11 at 09:34 PM

This was the strangest blog comment I’ve ever written.

Actually, this may be the strangest blog comment ever written.

Comment by de stijl on 01/02/11 at 10:33 PM

de stijl, there are entire communities of high colonic enthusiasts, whose preoccupations with about 120 feet of themselves produce far weirder comments than the above intimately painful story.

How do I know? Google search for “cleansers” gone horribly, horribly wrong. And images.

I don’t want to talk about it.

Except to advance my theory that friendly flora and fauna are used to their own neighborhoods, and it seems awfully arrogant, not to say Western (a curse word to some health nuts), to interfere by turning a water cannon up oneself, so that the bacilli from South Texas are suddenly wandering around Portland, shivering, and causing the locals to talk.

Comment by Mrs. Polly on 01/03/11 at 12:35 PM

I’m really disappointed with your old neighbors, Anyone wandering about New Year’s Day screaming for scotch should have been presented with a bottle of The McCallan to assuage the demon delirium tremens suffered by the poor woman, even if they weren’t familiar with you dog, which they should have been. Soulless creatures.