Dead Puppies Lead To...

I sat uncomfortably in the presence of several administrators in the
conference room. They all tapped their fingers impatiently and looked
at me with severe disappointment. I looked down at the floor and tried
to suppress my tears.

"You know you could be expelled for this, right?"

I couldn't speak. Tears welled up in my eyes. I hated him. He ruined
my career as a college student. Now I would never make more than
$8.00/hour.

"These emails........you encouraged him. Why did you do it?"

"Look, I didn't know he was actually that crazy! I thought he was just
joking about the dead puppies! How was I supposed to know he was
serious about throwing dead puppies around at the beer factory?!"

They didn't care, though. I was not only dismissed from George Mason
University, but I was arrested and charged as an accomplice.
Additionally, I was thrown out of Fairfax county based on the fact
that I would never make enough money to live there and I was sentenced
to several years worth of puppy-related community service in the
mountains of West Virginia. I lived happily for 3 years just outside
of Beckley, WV where I worked at the local Food Lion as a stock girl
making $7.50. I couldn't afford to live on my own so I lived with my
gainfully employed boyfriend, Bobby. Not only did Bobby provide me
with a nice trailer to live in but on weekends he would take me out to
eat at the Old Country Buffet and let me pick out a movie to rent at
Blockbuster.

Go figure -- my happiness couldn't last for long. Bobby unexpectedly
died in a freak BASE jumping accident during Bridge Day. I told him
not to do it but he did it anyway. I mean, I didn't yell at him or
anything because tons of people do it every year and only a few have
died.....but still. His parachute didn't open and the paramedics ended
up scraping his mangled body off a rock below Highway 19.

Not a week after the accident, I discovered I was pregnant. I didn't
believe in abortion, though.

...so I got an abortion. I didn't really know what else to do.

By that time, I was up to making $7.82 at Food Lion. (Full disclosure:
that last twelve cent raise was totally due to sleeping with one of
the assistant managers.) I was able to pay the rent on the trailer
myself with the money I had saved up but I realized that wouldn't last
long. I couldn't live without cable television, Coca-Cola, and weekend
buffet restaurant trips. I realized that I would need to get a second
job.

I moved in with that assistant manager I slept with. His girlfriend
wasn't happy about that.

2 months in, that bitch called the cops on me after I dumped a bowl of
hot Spaghetti-O's on her lap. She had it coming, though; she was
always telling me what to do and when I was watching tv she'd come in,
take the remote, and change it to some shitty reality show. The night
of the Spaghetti-O's fiasco I was watching the cooking channel and
like, I was totally into it. Bitch comes in and starts ranting about
some Hollywood show where the winner gets fake boobs and a million
bucks, changes the channel, and boom. I get pissed. Anyway.....

So I ended up moving back to my family's farm in Piney River. Luckily
I was able to get a job at the Dollar General in Amherst because the
Food Lion there would not hire me. I ended up marrying this guy named
Ricky.......and shortly thereafter finding out he's actually somehow
related to me on my grandfather's side. We just kind of laugh about
that because the very same thing happened to my grandparents; they
were actually third cousins.

Years later we were taking a vacation down in Warshington, DC (there
are two intentional mistakes in that phrase; please appreciate them)
and that's when I saw him. He didn't look a day older than the last
time I had seen him. He wore jeans, a suit jacket, and a stupid grin
on his face. I walked right up to him and said, "Excuse me."

He looked up and down at my corpulent body (which had pushed out four
live babies), shivered, and asked, "Uh, do I know you?"

I was enraged.

"AAAAHHHHH, WHAT THE FUCK?! HOW COME YOU HAVEN'T CHANGED?! WHY DON'T
YOU LOOK OLDER?! WHY AREN'T YOU MISERABLE OR IN JAIL?!"

He blinked and wiped bits of my Large Lady Slobber Of Rage off his
cheek disdainfully. I continued.

"ZAC FUCKING ________, YOU SON OF A BITCH BEER-POLLUTING PUPPY KILLER!
YOU FUCKING RUINED MY LIFE! THANKS TO YOU, I WASN'T ALLOWED TO FINISH
COLLEGE AND I HAD TO LIVE IN A TRAILER, WORK A SHITTY JOB, DATE
COMPLETE DUMBASSES, AND HAVE A SHITLOAD OF KIDS. WHY ARE YOU NOT
MISERABLE LIKE ME?!"

"Ohhhhhh. Shit, I didn't recognize you. You got....well anyway, after
you got kicked out I got a call from Starr Hill and they said that
folks were actually raving about the beer that had the dead puppies in
it. They couldn't keep the stuff on the shelves! They ended up paying
me a boatload of money to come down there and dead puppy-fy the whole
damn factory. Administration at the school had a change of heart and
realized that no one really liked live puppies anyway. Not only did I
get to keep my job and finish my degree but Mason actually changed
their mascot to Sad Boris, The Dead Puppy. Now all of GMU's teams are
called the Stinking Dead Puppies! I make a shit-ton of money these
days actually......"

As my rage grew, so did I. Larger and larger until my head reached the
clouds. Up. Up. Up. Zac ________ was a tiny speck to me. A tiny speck
that ruined my life. I picked him up between my thumb and forefinger
and dangled him in front of my face. Before I could think of a
creative way to destroy him, his body went limp between my fingers and
he was dead. Turns out the guy was deathly allergic to clouds. Who
knew?

I sang a short song about whales and my rage was gone. I was
normal-sized again. In fact, my body had returned to the state it was
in before the four kids and the buffet restaurants. My vagina was like
brand new! My husband and kids disappeared before my eyes and there I
was -- all alone with Zac ________'s Dead Body.

He just looked like he was sleeping so I nudged him with my foot.
Nothing. I poked him in his side, then his armpit, and finally on the
bottom of his foot. Nothing.

I started to walk away but came back.

I knelt down.....wrote something on a post-it note.........and slapped
it on his forehead. I stood a few feet away and watched as tourists
walked by, read the note, and laughed at his dead-ass body.