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Dog Parking

Posted on by Johnny Roque

Driving to the dog park I spot an open parking spot, one of the few actually available. My little five year old standard poodle, a light 55 pounds and about 6 feet tall nearly jumps out of the car in excitement. She knows once we park and walk through the gate she wants to play in every pack or bark at the little shy pups in the corner to hurd them into a game that forces all the dogs to run. This game I call playing “catch the fast scared pup at the front.” The curb and parallel parking stand in her way to that beautiful part of her day. Parallel parking at one point took me 10 minutes to accomplish, but I trained my pup to help.

My car moves in a very analog way. Most cars leave the lot equipped to take on Megatron in a fight. They start themselves, drive themselves, and park themselves; the perfect car to drive people too busy or drunk to drive themselves. My car, a beautiful 96 Red Jeep Cherokee, manual transmission, oil eating, and gas guzzling beauty of a beast grinds its gears to a beautiful start and stop. I need to shift into first gear or slam down into reverse tapping my clutch to slide that shaft into place. Parallel parking usually means my tire eats the curb, unless my pup sits next to me.

I trained her to bark at the curb while sitting in the passenger seat. She makes life easier in every way. Driving to the park or anywhere with her reminds me of the love that we share in this world. Her whole entire existence radiates beauty and love. People that never owned a pet believe their existence relies on pet owners, but my pup creates my existence. Just the little bark warning me of the curb reminds me that someone loves me enough to warn me of any danger. I know the weeks of training her to hate the curb might mean something too, but anyone else in my life, everyone else technically never helped. They all just let me hit the curb, even after asking them to help.

Gliding my Jeep into the parking space I put the red giant into gear, pull the parking brake, and step out. My pup jumps right into my arms and I slowly put her down, just like when she weighed 10 pounds. Opening the gate to the park her tail wags while she runs to tell all her friends that she helped park the Jeep. I just watch my best friend enjoy her life and that makes the happiness in my life.

Birthday Candle

Posted on by Johnny Roque

Every year on my birthday, since the first, candles that represent my age find a place at my table. Just a silly wax representation of surviving the last 365 days. Usually, up until the mid double digits, people use stick candles, but at thirteen, the wax number candles make their appearance. The cake usually stays the same, one chocolate cake, or vanilla with icing, but once I used a pie, and at a surprise party, friends put candles on a meatloaf. One New Year’s resolution, I gave up sweets and my then-girlfriend, now wife—though I’m not too sure how to phrase it—orchestrated twenty-eight candles to sit on a very delicious and heavily sauced meatloaf. The sauce kept all the candles in place. It was at that moment I knew I had met my future wife.

Eventually, the candles dwindle down to one again. Not in a backwards countdown type of way, but just a sudden single candle. That single sole flame, bright and hot, sits on its one and only stem. Blowing it out in a moment then moving on with the cake. A cruel joke. Life, it seems, stops as swiftly as a candle’s flame, extinguished and sent adrift into the universe. My wife blew her last candles out last year.

She liked a chocolate cake covered in strawberry frosting. Her eyes lit up to sixty-nine candles on her cake; she turned eighty, we just laughed. She always laughed the best. This year, I added an extra candle to envision my wife’s smile. Nobody I know wants to cover a meatloaf in candles, the only person I knew sleeps peacefully every night. Adding an extra candle makes me feel closer to her. This year, I just had a thick piece of meatloaf and put two candles while our kids and grandkids sang to me. It was a truly beautiful, albeit brief, gesture, vanishing with a single breath.

A Boy on Neighborhood Watch Part 4

Posted on by Johnny Roque

Right after dinner I told everybody I needed to walk the dog. My mother looked at me and quickly reminded me that we do not own a dog. Rule number 83 of a good snoop says “keep hands up, ears open and explanations ready.” “Well mother” I firmly said looking straight into her eyebrows “I’m preparing so when we do have a dog, please excuse me it’s almost night time and if I’m not back before then you’ll ground me again.” She looked at me with her eyes saying “well played, now go play before you’re grounded.”

The hard part seemed to pass, but the dangerous part sits watching TV. I crept around the corner pretending to look for my contacts in the grass and on the floor, following rule number 23 “never look suspicious, only look suspiciously.”  I reached the side wall of my adversary, covered in dirt, mud, grass stains, and I think gum. The front door stood there taunting me, it told me to run in and shout with authority, but I knew better, plus the guard cat slept on the porch.

Mr. Arrington’s right hand man, Cookie guarded the house ferociously. A dog seems like a better choice to guard a house, but few people understand the importance of a guard cat. The rarity of guard cats make them a special case to handle. Guard dogs are easy. Dogs can be bought, a nice steak, pat on the head, tummy rub and the dog thinks it has a new best friend. Guard cats on the other hand are loyal until the last drop of blood, not even mice make it passed a guard cat. After carefully observing the situation there seemed no trace of Cookie, making the coast clear and the path to the back yard crumb-less.

A Boy on Neighborhood Watch Part 3

Posted on by Johnny Roque

Vanessa stood up and pointed while she shouted “Dodge your fly is down.” The rest of the kids laughed at my freed pants. I looked at everybody and knew that the only way to expose Mr. Arrington is with solid proof.

“Everybody please listen. My neighbor is a snoop, a spy, a ninja, he’s not normal. I zipped up my zipper let us talk about the current situation.” The blood in my body stopped at my cheeks and I could feel a faint coming upon me. I closed my eyes and counted to three and when I opened them Ms. West stood next to me.

“Anything else Dodge?” She said with a tone that I did not appreciate.

“Yes Ms. West. I don’t appreciate your tone.” I said that to save my dignity. I will show them. Off to the library to learn the ways of the snoop.

In the library I read book after book about different snoops, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and dozens of hand books that explained their techniques. I’m ready to show the world what Mr. Arrington is really about.

A Boy on Neighborhood Watch Part 2

Posted on by Johnny Roque

She stood up and told me to wait my turn. My turn took several people. First Cynthia stood up and shouted that her father was the most interesting person she knew. Apparently Cynthia’s dad works for city hall and he gets to go into every room and make sure that all of them are squeaky clean and without him nothing would get done. After her Steve told us about his doctor and the amazing way that Dr. Smith reads the charts and explains how he can straighten his spine. Then came Suzie, Julie, Matt, Kimberly, Jack, Frank, and Vanessa…Vanessa took the longest. All Vanessa talked about was herself, I really loath her for various reasons. Finally I stood up and shouted “Mr. Arrington definitely beats all of your ‘interesting’ people.”

Ms. West took a breath and told me “Calm down Jeremy.”

“I would love to Ms. West, but your hair would jump out of place once you find out about Mr. Arrington. So take a seat, I tell you this for your own good.” Ms. West continues to stand and I feel bad for her since she’s about to fall flat on her pencil nit skirt, which she has been wearing for two days in a row now. “Mr. Arrington is my neighbor and I know for certain that he either was or currently is a snoop of some sort. My apologies to all of you since you all are in danger now that you know Mr. Arrington’s horrible secret. Run, tell your parents, hide under the covers, bolt down the silver wear.”

A Boy on Neighborhood Watch Part 1

Posted on by Johnny Roque

Looking at my neighbor I would assume nothing is different from him and the ordinary retiree. He wakes up early enough to buy fresh coffee and turns all the lights off in his house exactly one hour after the sun sets. Every time my sister and I walk to school he hands us a piece of hard candy and wishes us luck on our day. Very “retiree” behavior and I commend him for keeping up the façade for such a long time. Nobody else notices the small quarks that are as obvious as a leaf flying through the air instead of floating. The things I have told people does sound a little off, but I’m sure once people notice them it will all come together. Things like his feet, his house, how he speaks, and even how he dresses before he goes to bed. People I speak to tell me it is in my head or I have been playing too many video games, but it’s not. He’s a part of something, I’m not sure yet, but it is something that is very secretive. Someone will believe me some day that this retiree has secrets, secrets most intriguing to anybody, but especially to a nine year old boy such as me.

I like him, he’s not a bad guy and actually he’s like an uncle to us; an old uncle that my grandmother gave birth to at a very young age. In class Ms. West asked us to talk about the most interesting person we know, normal dumb stuff they make you do in second grade, and I told her about Mr. Arrington my neighbor.

Movie Review: Alice in Wonder, what the hell happened to this movie,land

Posted on by Johnny Roque

Alice in Wonderland Review

“Alice in Wonderland,” looks beautiful, but much like people that relied solely on their looks their entire life and only read between the lines on the wonderfully sculpted bodies, falls short in expectations. After literally waiting for this movie to come out for a year it finally arrives and I really wished it came with a little less pizzazz and more of a story.

A quick breakdown of the movie shows older Alice finds herself in a broken distorted Wonderland, then she aimlessly runs around unsure of what to do while a civil war between two kingdoms rages. This movie resembles the 1985 film “Return to Oz,” where Dorothy returns to Oz to find it in a worse condition than she left it and once again she carries the responsibility of cleaning up somebody else’s mess. Really the biggest difference between the two movies is that Johnny Depp only acts in one of them and the disappointment cost a lot less in 1985. This version of “Alice in Wonderland” is a live action film, instead of animated like its predecessor and takes place with Alice as an adult in the Victorian period. The advertisement for this film may have said “Alice in Wonderland” but the film clearly punched up its supporting cast member, Johnny Depp who played the Mad Hatter, as a main character, which he was not.

For the audience members that love seeing pretty pictures, but hate the way story content keeps hurting their brains, this movie is for you. Alice gets transported to an amazingly constructed Wonderland, by the fantastic Tim Burton. Tim Burton visually like all of his movies brings his “A” game, but he drops the ball once the story comes into play. This entire world feels empty, except for all the characters from the animated film and a few new ones that appear. Alice seems to save an entire world consisting of about a hundred people at most, so in retrospect she freed the amount of people that go to the DMV during mid day, not an amazing feat.

Children and teens will show the most appreciation for this film. Children probably have not seen the original and the movies visuals will keep them entertained for almost the entire time, excluding some of the beginning. Same reasoning goes for teens only that if teens do get bored this would be a great make-out movie, because if anything is missed it can easily be explained or simply overlooked to understand the film.