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Boy Bites Dog
I took my favorite baseball bat (Ok, my only baseball bat), and a hatchet, and started chopping. A few minutes later I had very serviceable club, about 18-20 inches long, and with a short, but still sharp point on the end. I started carrying that in my paper bag from that point on.
I didn’t tell anyone, of course. Because I never did. I was 11… plenty old enough to be making my own decisions.
[fuzzy screen, indicating flashback]
When I was 10, I called up the city paper and told them I wanted a route. Nowadays, most suburban papers seem to be delivered by adults, but back in the olden days, it was all done by a vast army of kids. A couple of days later, a guy showed up at the front door looking for me. He was the district manager for the paper, and had a route nearby my house where the current guy was getting ready to graduate high school, and he needed someone new. I hadn’t told anyone about it; I was the one doing the work, so why was it anyone else’s business? It turned out that the minimum age was 12, so I only got the route when I agreed to share it with my 11 year old brother. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea… he wasn’t the one who’d made the call. That was me, in my never ending quest to always have money in my pocket.
It was one of the last evening papers, so for the next 4 ½ years we were out delivering, 6 afternoons a week and Sunday morning. I took the right side of each street, he the left. Each of us had about 40 houses to cover, basically two blocks long worth of houses, with the end streets.
Now the stereotype is always about dogs chasing mailmen, but in the rough and tumble world of suburban newspaper delivery, paperboys were also on the line. The difference was that the mailmen were armed with dog mace. We had nothing. And there was a monster on the route.
Halfway down the first block, on my brother’s side of the street, was the biggest damn German Shepard I’ve ever seen, even to this day. It was pure white, and big enough that even though they had a five-foot wooden privacy fence running around their back yard, we could still see the dog, because it would stand up and look over the top of the fence.
It was little over one year later, on a cold, frozen Sunday morning in February, when the first encounter happened. I was on the last street, a block over from where the monster lived. I had just tossed a paper on a porch and was walking across the driveway towards the next house, when something jumped out at me from between the two parked cars in the 2-car driveway. The monster had me by the arm, and was trying to drag me down. He had his teeth set and wasn’t letting go.
I used my Intimidating Shout to drive him back, a barbarian yawp of power. Ok, it may be that I screamed like a girl, but I was 11, still decades away from my voice changing. Whichever it was, and truthfully I couldn’t have answered for sure even five minutes later, I scared the monster off and survived.
3 months later, the same thing happened to my brother, but this time instead of long underwear, a sweatshirt and a heavy winter coat, he was wearing a tank top. The monster had his teeth into his elbow, and would just not let go. My brother ended up with 33 stitches in his elbow.
That night, after he got back from the emergency room, my folks were talking things over. This was a dog that had already bitten 4 or 5 people, and they were taking about hiring a lawyer. I was in favor of loading a couple of pounds of ground beef with rat poison and tossing it over the fence. But I was vetoed, so the next morning I was out in the garage making myself some protection. Because my brother was going to be out of action for weeks and I was going to be covering the whole route.
And two weeks later, I had occasion to use my new weapon. I was nearly done delivering one day, when a different dog charged out of a back yard. This was another German Shepard, not as big as the monster, but still a full grown male. Given that I was never more than average in size, and wearing the ‘Slim’ sized jeans, pound for pound it was pretty much a fair fight.
I shoved my hands down into the paper bag. Like any paperboy worth his salt, I had the saddle bag style bag. With a hole cut in the middle, I put my head through the hole and carried the papers front and back. Being almost done, there were only two papers left in the bag, but I gripped the club at each end. The dog came straight at me at full speed, snarling all the way, and from 8 or 10 feet away jumped straight at my face.
With my arms covered by the canvas bag, I set my feet and met the jump with a motion like a football player hitting a tackling dummy and we crashed into each other. And then I went after him, swinging and kicking for all I was worth.
At some point I went down, but went right on swinging. For 10 or 20 seconds the scene was like the Tasmanian devil; just a spinning blur with an arm or dog leg occasionally visible, until the dog decided he’s had enough and ran for it.
I got up and finished the route, crossing the street to where my favorite customer, Mr. Sweeney, was waiting, he having seen the whole thing. He and his wife were always really nice, always in a good mood and the best tippers on the route. Of course they were drinkers; that might have had something to do with it. He looked me up and down.
“Are you Ok?”
“Yeah”
“Yeah… I guess you are.”
It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized I had forgotten about the club, and had never even pulled it from my bag. As far as the title goes, I can’t swear that I actually bit the dog. But then again, I can’t swear I didn’t. I never told anyone about this either. Why would I? I had handled it.
From the time forward the monster was always chained up. And as for the other one, I never even saw that dog again. Either I had taught it a lesson it never forgot, or I had killed it.
Whatever.
Published in Group Writing
Haha! When I was 21, I got carded for an R rated movie. “Are you 17?” I was so insulted.
As a matter of fact this story and your other great story about the fireworks make me think of A Christmas Story. But not of Ralphie exactly because you were much cooler than him.
Winning !
I had a similar experience on my paper route but not as dramatic.
I’ve done about a half dozen of these. I’m running out of childhood.
Aha, then I have some catching up to do.
Wow. I never had a paper route. But at 11 years old, you would have been my hero! Assuming you actually did bite him. Or maybe not.
I like your story.
Our neighbors in our back yard, back 300 yards behind some woods, had a black german shepherd named King. King stayed in his pen, and barked when anyone was near, but we never paid much attention to him because he stayed in his pen.
One time we decided to pitch tents in the back yard and camp overnight. It was a big deal to young kids. Ghost stories included an admonition from my dad to watch out for bears (in Virginia Beach). Of course, King got loose that night and came sniffing around the tent. You never saw such scared kids in your life. King was gentle, though we didn’t know it, and didn’t know he was King. To us, he was a menacing black bear.
I never had a bad experience with a dog until my wife’s friend’s chihauhau tried to eat my face a couple years ago. Twenty stitches in my lip. My wife was worried I would kill the dog. A comical night. In retrospect, that is.
Great story. I admire your attitude and your bravery.
Apparently I told the the story wrong. There was no bravery; it was pure animal instinct. If there had been any brain activity going on, I would have used the club.
Great story!
A propos of nothing:
I never had a paper route; where I grew up (rural Oregon with 82 acre zoning), there were no paper routes.
But my father has a wicked sense of humor, and when he was offered a dehorned psychotic ram, he did not hesitate. We called it Lamb Chops, and it was a vicious beast. He would roam the property, and, if he spied us, he would charge, knock us down, and butt us endlessly. I still have nightmares of one session of being cornered in a remote corner of the field, with Lamb Chops giving me a proper thrashing.
To my father, this was all great fun. Lamb Chops never took him on – a 6’4″ Viking with steel-toed boots was out of the ram’s league. But children were fair game, and my father thought it would build character. I guess he was right – we learned a great deal from Lamb Chops.
My littler brothers had fingers broken when Lamb Chops cut them off and nailed them between the car and the front door. He would hide, wait for them to emerge, and then charge at the little boy who was screaming in terror and desperately seeking refuge in the house. In hindsight, I can see how my father thought it was funny.
Eventually calmer heads (my mother’s specifically) prevailed, and my father gave the ram away to a man who wanted to start a sustainable resource and already had a female. Apparently during the drive to his future Intended, Lamb Chops shattered the windows in the pickup truck. When he got there, the female, who still had her horns, did not put up with it; she tore Lamb Chops apart. I never learned whether he learned better manners or died in pursuit of his principle that any living thing near his size needed to be assaulted.
I’d like to think he died horribly.
My goodness–what people will do for amusement in the wilderness!
This is just the best. You should make it a children’s book.
Could go on the shelf next to Go the [redacted] to Sleep, All My Friends are Dead, and Nobody likes a [redacted]block.
Seriously. Look up any of those books on Amazon and check out the “customers who bought this item also bought” section.
My younger brother weighed in by email:
I liked your version better. Tall Tales, right?
The older I get, the better I was.
Great Story Judge!!! The man can write!!
Read this again today. Judge, this is superb. I am content and jealous, so it must be really excellent.