acquaintences – Jamie DeBree

The Golden Retriever’s Owner

I didn’t really want to walk the dogs one night earlier this week (okay, most nights this week). It was cooler and windy and threatening to rain – it had sputtered a bit an hour earlier, and I hate walking in the rain (though not quite as much as the dogs). I’ve had to walk the dogs separately for awhile now, and one of my biggest fears is the weather turning bad before I get back from the first walk, necessitating a second walk in worse weather (or not being able to take the second one at all).

In any case, the temperature was still decent, and while my eyes do not handle the wind well at all, the weather is not supposed to really get much better or worse, and the dogs need their exercise (so does their owner). So, I put my shoes and jacket on, and off we went for a short hike around a nearby school/church “compound” of sorts.

As Athena and I reached about the quarter mark of our walk, I saw another walker with his dog coming toward us, and crossed the street, as Athena can be rude to other dogs. And then I realized it was an elderly man who lives a block and a half away from us, walking his golden retriever. He waved, I waved, Athena was on good behavior, his retriever wagged its tail…everyone was friendly all around.

I’d been wondering about him for a while now, as I hadn’t seen him out walking since I’ve been able to be out again and the weather was decent enough. I’m sure he’s in his 80’s, and one afternoon last summer, I had a very nice chat with him while I was out walking Apollo and he was out in his yard. We’d discussed my first surgery, and his health, and his poor neighbor, whose dog had pulled her over and broken her hip. He’d been headed over there to walk her dog for her while she was healing after he finished walking his golden.

A year or so before that, he’d seen me one evening walking past his house with both dogs, struggling to keep them under control as another dog passed on the other side of the street (yes, I did keep them under control, but it was hard work). He’d smiled once the other dog had gone past, clearly sympathetic, and simply held up one finger.

I got the message. And I knew he was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit defeat just then. That was before Athena chomped my left wrist, before I had two surgeries in six months, before I fell walking Athena and seriously stretched a tendon, again in my left wrist. All of which forced me to follow his sage advice, and walk one dog at a time. My left wrist is no longer strong/stable enough to control a large dog that might lunge at a bunny on its own. I don’t know if it ever will be again.

I don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine (that I know of), but still, we know each other, and we’re friendly in passing and I’m sure we’d take the time to chat and catch up if circumstances allowed again.

I like knowing he’s still out there, able to walk his dog and enjoy the seasons even at this late point in his life. He’s living the kind of life I want to work toward, and I will do my best to be like him in my “golden” years. Perhaps I’ll wave and have sidewalk conversations with someone younger than I, out walking their dogs in the twilight hours as well.

If I do, I’m certain I’ll think of him, and the years seeing him and his goldens on the street, waving and sharing a smile and a common love of our four-legged friends.

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Getting to Know You

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my characters, and how I can take them from two-dimensional “ideas” to more fully rounded fictional “people”. For a long time, I loved the internet and interacting with people online specifically because it was “mind-to-mind” communication. If you don’t know what someone looks like or what their physical characteristics are, then surely that’s a more “pure” form of connection, right?

I think I’ve been wrong about that.

In studying the craft of writing, I’ve been experimenting a lot. When I started writing (and for many years after), I rarely described my characters in any physical detail. I might mention eye color or hair color or general build, but there was nothing to set them apart from any other female or male character, and I never even thought twice about clothing unless they weren’t wearing any…although I guess that means none of my characters were ever dressed unless something happened that actually involved their clothes.

The only thing that set one character apart from the other was their actions (generic, for the most part) and their speech, which served as the conduit for their thoughts. And I thought that was good enough, as they should be able to fit into any generic “skin”, right? Turns out, even in my own mind, that really isn’t the case.

A year or so ago, I took a course on writing with depth, and one of the first things we had to do was write a scene with a moving character. And the thing I remember most is that through the course of building up my scene for the assignment, I had to add details…and that those details, right down to the kind of clothes and shoes I gave the character, were absolutely necessary to give the reader a complete person, rather than just a transparent skin of thoughts and feelings.

What I found is that my characters hairstyle, hair color, dress, and whether or not they wore makeup and jewelry (and what kind) was all very descriptive of their personality, and silently signaled things that would never be revealed through speech and thought. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

I had honestly never considered it before, but then I started comparing that writing exercise to meeting people online first, and then in person. I realized that my impression of someone I’d only ever talked to online, especially if I’d never seen a photo or video of them, was incredibly different and often incomplete from the impression I had of that person once I met them offline. It’s almost like meeting an entirely different person, and it takes a bit to feel like you really “know” them again (at least it does for me).

I think that may be part of the reason video has become so popular on social media sites. Because even though you’re still not in the room with someone, you can get a better sense of who they are as a whole person, rather than only what’s in their head. And I really do think that make a difference in how we relate to people, and whether we see them as just a hypothetical, interactive consciousness, or as a 3-dimensional human we can more fully relate to as “one of our own”.

I have a few friends who have started occasionally making videos, and obviously, for those I knew in person first, there’s no weirdness there. But for people I hadn’t seen or heard speak before, watching them was a bit disconcerting at first, and I think it was because I was experiencing more of the “whole person” effect, rather than just text on a screen. I kind of think meeting those people in person now would be easier than meeting someone I’ve only corresponded with via text, as I’ve gotten closer to that “3-D” experience.

I’m curious – have you experienced this sort of disjoint when meeting someone in person you’ve only spoken to online before? And do you think video helps give us a better impression of the “whole person” than text-based media?

One last thing just to ponder: have you ever genuinely liked and enjoyed someone’s company online having not seen them, only to genuinely dislike them after meeting them offline?

Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler

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The Golden Retriever’s Owner