A Sad Time

Our dear friend has just lost her dog.  We are all very sad, she being the saddest.  I suggested we, The Tutor and I, send her some flowers with the following quote attached:

Upon walking a moonlit field after a great battle, Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master licking his face and howling:

"This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his loyal dog.  I had looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands.  Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears.  And by what?   By the grief of one dog."

Perhaps it is best that our beloved pets pre-decease us for the alternative is just too grim to contemplate

I think it quite consoling.

Jamais Vu

Kabul, Afghanistan

August 15, 2021

After 20 years of war, American troops help in the evacuation of embassy personnel and other civilians.

A Victim of Misplaced Confidence

Me:  "I'm not revealing to you my address and telephone number!  You'll seek me out professing love and then either kill me in a fit of possessive rage over one of my silly platonic men-friends or alternatively slay me for my vast sums of money!"

The Tutor:  "I would not kill you for your alleged riches nor would I kill you while reacting in a puerile jealous pique.  I would never kill for such a vulgar concern as money - I have plenty of my own.  And I would never kill for love - I mean, really, how gauche and ill-bred is that?  I would never kill out of religious zeal or political intrigue either.  I kill as a matter of taste.  Simple as that.  I like pasta, I like the colour beige, I like the music of ABBA and I like to kill."

Me:  "Very well then: 613 - 555 - 1212.  And you better call me!"

The Tutor:  "Thank you.  You won't be sorry.  Do you happen to have any food allergies by any chance?  Or any common phobias that could be truly life-threatening if handled indelicately?"