Reader's Tails

by Eric Brown

 

“How can you take my daughter’s name and give it to a dog?” My younger sister was hardly pleased that we named our 8-week old Lab/Hound mix Madison. My culinary-inclined mother suggested naming the dog after a spice or a tea or “How about something from the legume family?” My fancy mother-in- law thought the name Fifth Avenue evoked better breeding while my father suggested simply listing the naming rights on eBay.

Now it’s true that we hadn’t purchased the dog tag yet. We hadn’t ordered her monogrammed food and water bowls nor commissioned the mural that was to feature her likeness and namesake. However, my wife and I were concerned that an unusual name could create some esteem issues, thus slating her for underachievement. (Our instinct was later validated when she graduated runner-up in puppy training class, having only urinated twice in the classroom). Had we been more cavalier about her future, we could have buckled to the mounting pressure. Instead, we stood our ground.

“You don’t have a daughter!” I told my sister, “You’re not pregnant, you don’t even have a boyfriend!”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Are you dating anyone?”

“I have someone in mind.”

“In mind? Have you spoken to him?” I inquired.

“We’re working through some things.”

As it was, my sister had a crush on a co-worker and was relying on coincidence to maneuver her way to some closer proximity.

“Well, I’m going to have a family some day and if I have a daughter I was planning on naming her Madison. Isn’t a baby more important than a dog?”

Is a baby more important than a dog? Isn’t choosing favorites one of the cornerstones of bad parenting? Haven’t countries fought wars to address questions of this magnitude?

If I’m someone’s lifeline on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and the options were cat, hamster, dog, or baby–which is more important, I’d apply my Princeton Review elimination techniques, learned from my days preparing to cheat the SAT exam, and make an educated guess.

No way it’s cat. Obesity is an ever growing health concern and fat cats are bad role models. Garfield is nothing but this generation’s Joe Camel.

Hamster is obviously wrong—but maybe a little too obvious. A trap? Maybe it’s one of those trick questions loaded in a producer’s holster which is tossed into the queue just when the contestant is about to score a million bucks.

Dogs are important. They sniff suitcases at airports looking for drugs that, if not otherwise found, could lower the artificially high prices that Baby Boomers are paying. Although, shrinking profit margins could put dealers out of work. Are dogs more important than jobs?

The answer is baby. Babysitters need babies, otherwise they’re just getting paid to sit around and watch TV. Baby Gap thinks babies are so important that they built them their own store where parents—most notably moms—can spend recklessly on clothes that will fit for no more than 4 to 6 months. But airline passengers on long, international flights have been known to hate babies. And airlines themselves don’t find babies particularly important because parents wedge their kid between the tray table and seat buckle instead of paying for an extra seat.

Well, even if a baby is considered more important than a dog, I’m not so sure about an unborn baby girl resting on the chances of my sister scoring some fortuitous seating arrangement. The family agreed. But just before we made Madison official, I checked to see if anyone had reached my $100,000 auction reserve price. My sister bid $50 bucks.