Frozen Toothpaste

This last Monday, this country celebrated — to the extent that it celebrates any federal holiday — Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. In honor of the occasion, the New York Times ran an interesting essay by Sarah Vowell that I couldn’t help but agree with.

Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov. 17, 1957, in Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the “loving your enemies” sermon this way: “So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you: ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’ ”

Go ahead and re-read that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”

The Bible is a big long book and Lord knows within its many mansions of eccentricity finding justification for literal and figurative witch hunts is as simple as pretending “enhanced investigation technique” is not a synonym for torture. I happen to be with Dr. King in proclaiming the Sermon on the Mount’s call for love to be at the heart of Christian behavior, and one of us got a Ph.D in systematic theology.

I will admit it: I am not the world’s best dog owner. In an average week, Lucky probably goes on no more than four walks. Surely this record isn’t atrocious enough to merit calling the local humane society, but it’s not too good either.

And I get the impression from Lucky that it’s abysmal. When it’s been more than 24 hours, he starts to follow me around, getting in my way and generally doing all he can to make sure I notice him. When I walk around the house, he runs ahead of me rather than ambling after me.

Generally, Lucky’s a pretty mellow dog. He doesn’t hate lying around on his giant pillow. But when he knows he’s going for a walk, he is probably the single most excitable dog on earth. I’ve never considered this more than a funny problem, after all, Lucky doesn’t weight much more than 20 pounds fully grown.

Where a bigger dog could pull you down the street with his excitement, Lucky is only able to make it clear that he’d like to go a little faster, or that he’d like a little more time to investigate this smell. If I disagree with his request, we still do what I want.

But it’s his excitement about getting a walk that sometimes makes me wonder. After all, the only other high point in the day of an average dog is when he gets fed. I would guess that he enjoys it when people pet him, but I’ve never been able to shake the possibility that he allows that out some feeling of obligation.

Some would argue that he must enjoy it, after all, he often takes the opportunity to show his appreciation by licking any accessible human flesh. But I can’t shake the feeling that he just likes the taste. Maybe that’s why he lets me pet him, so he can lick my arm or face as I do it.

I find it moderately disturbing, this dependence. The dog’s whole life depends on me. He has few joys that I don’t bring him, few disappointments that I don’t cause — usually by accidentally saying the world “walk” when I don’t mean it.

This dependence is even stranger in its reflection not on the dogs, but on dog owners. After all, we owners of animals chose to get them, from the Humane Society or the pet store; these animals make no choice of us.

So what is it? Why do we own dogs? Have cats? I can’t avoid the feeling that we like to be depended upon. After all, even when no one seems to care where you are, your pet has to. His or her existence depends upon yours. And the contingent nature of his existence helps to make your life more important.

I suppose this is why we fear the “cat lady,” why we fear becoming her. She has to reassure herself of her worth because no other human would. No one called to check up on her. Wondered where she had gone.

Or maybe she just likes cats. Maybe I just like my dog.

Today is Father’s Day. As is his custom, Frank Warren, PostSecret’s curator, has posted a number of lovely and heart-breaking secrets from people all over the country. And though the site is not without it’s failings (most notably that secrets only stay up for a week), it’s consistently fascinating to read other people’s anonymously disclosed secrets. It’s a kind of immediate intimacy that seems to never get old.

In case you’re too lazy to give it a look, here are two of my personal favorites from this Father’s (though shouldn’t it be Fathers’?) Day.