Category: First-World Problems

I don’t really talk to strangers much. Maybe because I have some social anxiety that prevents it. Maybe because I learned about Stranger Danger when I was kid—you remember: mustachioed guy with Mars bars offering rides home in his windowless van.

But one place I always found it easy to strike up conversations with people I didn’t know was the dog park. I used to go there all the time when my dogs were younger, and something about being in a fenced-in space watching these lovable beings running around, and slobbering, and pooping, makes people want to share with others about how their specific dog runs around, and slobbers, and poops.

So one day, I was chatting with a stranger—I’m sure—about the minutiae of our dogs’ bowel movements, when somehow we got off on a different topic. We started talking about creamsicles. You know what those are, right?

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid and I’d hear popsicles, I’d be like, “Ooooh!” but if they turned out to be creamsicles, I was all

Good god. They were the best.

Anyway, this particular stranger said, “You know, Arby’s has a creamsicle milkshake.”

STOP.

WUT.

Now I was at the dog park in Carrboro when this happened, and if you’ve ever been there, you know there’s an Arby’s, like, a quarter of a mile away. And I was like, Fuuuuuuuuuuuck this place—I’m out. I loaded up my dogs and headed for the drive-thru.

I wasn’t familiar with Arby’s menu—I mean, is anybody? Does ANYBODY go to Arby’s? Be honest, how many of you have been to Arby’s in the last month?

No, it’s definitely a nationwide drug front.

Anyway, I got some kind of sandwich and some fries—you know to balance out the meal—and the motherfucking creamsicle milkshake.

I only ate about half the sandwich and half the fries because they were just OK, but when I tell you the creamsicle milkshake… was a creamsicle milkshake—listen, it was a creamsicle… but also a milkshake. I was in dire ice cream headache pain but could not stop slurping it down. Thing was gone in 2½ minutes.

I lived in Hillsborough at the time, so I went home, dropped the dogs off, and headed to Durham to go out for the night. So I was on I-85 headed east when the stomach cramp hit me. It was one of those that makes you kind of stand up out of your seat, as if you might be able to get away from it?

And I was scared because I was on that stretch of highway between Hillsborough and Durham where there are no exits whatsoever. Hoping that the cramp was a one-off, I settled back into my seat, but alas. Alas! My guts started convulsing inside me. I hit the gas pedal. I needed to make it to Route 70, and I needed to do a very rude thing indeed to some poor gas station’s bathroom. I sped towards Durham, but it became VERY clear VERY soon that I was just not. going. to make it.

And that’s a weird moment, you know? When you realize that in a very short time you’re going to be a person who has shat in the woods next to the highway.

For the rest of your life.

You can’t un-become that person.

Forever and ever, if you find yourself in a game of I Never, and somebody says, “I’ve never dropped a roadside deuce,” you’re going to have to drink. It’s very humbling.

But I didn’t really have time to consider what was happening. I pulled off the interstate, grabbed some napkins from the Arby’s bag still in the front seat, and sprinted—as much as one can sprint while squeezing her ass cheeks together—into the woods.

Now I grew up in the country, just down yonder from Mr. Proffitt’s cattle farm, so I know of which I’m about to speak. When I say what came out of my body was a cowpie, I mean, in circumference, height, volume, consistency, everything—

’twas a cow pie.

Like, have you ever taken a shit so big that, when you stood up, you were off-balance? That’s how it was. Like all my organs had shifted to make room for it and now they had to slide back into place.

I staggered back to my car and made it home, and everything was totally fine—I didn’t end up in the ER or anything–but the take-away, of course, is that Stranger Danger is not always a dude in a van with candy. Sometimes it’s a friendly person at the dog park with advice about fast food.

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A lot of people said,

“There’s probably another explanation.”
“Could anything else have happened to it?”
“Maybe it’s just misplaced.”

But it was in that box. Inside another box, in my closet, next to my socks. And my house has never been broken into. What other conclusion am I supposed to draw?

There isn’t any. Someone I know took my great grandmother’s engagement ring.

I filed a police report. Durham PD has a detective who does nothing but pawn shop investigations. He’s very good, I was told by a clerk at National Pawn as I peered into their jewelry case. The investigator asked for a photo. I didn’t have a photo. I drew a picture, added details from the 1998 appraisal I had in my files, and emailed it to him.

I haven’t heard anything.

I didn’t expect to, really. I can’t imagine a friend or acquaintance taking it for the money. I don’t have destitute people as guests in my home (though I don’t like what that says about me). Years ago, a woman in my therapy group shared about her shoplifting compulsion. It wasn’t that she needed to—she had plenty of money—and she clearly knew better, but she had a pathology. I assume it’s the same in this case.

Speaking of pathology, my mind is doing weird things.

The day after I wrote the last post, I let the dogs in and found myself standing at the door unable to move. I stared at the door jamb and, in the middle of the day on a Sunday with my two pit bulls at my feet in a house where I’ve never felt unsafe, flipped the lock on the knob and threw the deadbolt.

In a fit of “Do I really trust who I trust?”, I changed the password on all my protected blog posts.

And I keep having fantasies of the ring’s return. Of a friend coming to me, crying and sheepish, to confess. Of finding an anonymous package in my mailbox. Of the detective calling and saying, “It turned up at the Picasso on Roxboro and Club.” And yes, of finding it in my laundry basket and having to eat crow. I would gladly eat crow. But it’s not in my laundry basket. It would’ve had to slither out of the box, that was inside the other box, in my closet, next to my socks.

Maybe this experience hasn’t changed me. When a friend asked if he could invite two new acquaintances to my New Year’s Eve party, I said yes without any hesitation. Is that because I still believe in people, love people, want to know people? Or is it because I literally have nothing else to lose? There’s literally nothing else anyone could take from my house that means anything to me.

I guess that’s not true. If someone took the dogs, I’d lose my fucking mind.

So there’s that. I have my dogs.

Dogs are the best. They have so few pathologies.