A Twisted Mother’s Day Tale for Shania ~ Dogs, Guns, Fat Chicks & a Jackass

A new reader has asked for more information regarding the time my mother shot her neighbor’s dog, so I’m going to re-tell the tale here.  It’s still hard to believe, but fantastical enough to repeat . . .

By the way, Shania, thanks for asking a question!  I’m thinking you might wish you didn’t, but I hate to disappoint.

Lastly, for those of you who are extra sensitive about animals, think twice!  I DO NOT like to make people cry.

* * * * *

I was 21 when marriage #3 occurred & already long gone from the house. 

THANK GOD! 

Mom has had guns ever since Jackass came into the picture, but maybe before that, too.  Something makes me think there was talk of a hidden firearm when we were growing up (with husband #2).  But if that’s the case and I never saw the gun. . .

This is what happens when I begin daydreaming of the good old days.  Considering Mother’s Day is around the corner, it’s only appropriate.

. . .  how come we so easily found the sexual implements and naked picture of #2’s gigantor erection?  

It completely BLOWS my belief that Mom was just really bad at hiding things!  I understand Christmas gifts and Easter eggs, but multi-colored dildos and hemi-powered vibrators?  (I’d think the inside of a locked safe, behind an anti-microbial glass wall, would have been the proper spot.)

ANYWAY . . .

Jackass is so talented that he once pissed off his own sister so much that she put an 8-inch butcher knife in his back, right up to the handle, just missing his heart.  Thus, he understandably has a fondness for the corner of a room and the protection of a weapon.  It then makes no sense that he lives with the craziest woman I know, but whatever.

The first I heard of actual gunplay was when Mom shot at Jackass in their bedroom while still living at the house in Illinois.  I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the proof myself.  (Well, yeah, I probably would.)

As so many of my family’s stories do, this one includes a holiday twist.  Once, and only once, I took my son home for Christmas.  While sitting around the dining room table with my mother and sister, Mom got as excited as any little girl and insisted her husband open his present early. 

My sister became aggressively vocal and kept saying, “No, Mom, not in front of the kids!”  Considering that this sibling of mine didn’t blink when her husband said c.*c.k.s*cker multiple times per day in front of her children, I wondered if it might be dynamite or a live grenade inside the wrapped paper.

It was a handgun.  To be fair, that wouldn’t necessarily be such a big deal in the Midwest.  They’re relatively common . . . among hunters.  It was true, though, that there were no mooseheads on our walls, pheasant on our table or venison in our freezer.  Plus, aren’t those shot with rifles?  Or bow and arrow?  I have no idea.

When I asked my sister why she was so upset, she took me into the bedroom and pointed at the window, then let me finger the bullet hole for myself.  She told me Mom had shot at Jackass and missed.  (WTF?  The woman should have thrown a bowling ball at his head.  She’s got a great average!)

Bless her heart, for once Mom was doing the fair thing and giving Jackass a chance to return fire during their next altercation.  I’m sure there’s a Christmas moral there somewhere. 

All I know for sure is that my brother would have been so completely pissed off if any stray bullets had hit his extensive stolen CD collection.

* * * * *

I never heard any more about a gun until one of our demented family vacations.  Somehow the subject of the neighbor’s dog came up.  I’m sure there was laughter involved.

Preface this with the fact that everyone in my family is a big-time dog lover, except for me.  I mean, I like SOME dogs (but no dog poop).  Plus, I’m allergic.  But then so is my mother.  Actually, she might be even more allergic to children.

My brother & sister have always been far more “in the know” regarding family affairs.  I’m always in the dark.  I will NEVER know the best stories.  I’m sure many died with my brother, since my mother & he were like the villain Dastardly and her dog Muttley in this cartoon.  That’s exactly how my brother would laugh at my mother’s stupidity.

I HAD to know, what was the deal with the neighbor’s dog?

Mom is never one to back off from a story when she believes she’s in the right and someone else is in the wrong.  At that time she was living in Kentucky alone with husband #3 (a/k/a Jackass).  (My siblings were still in Illinois.)  They had moved into a beautiful new home set far back off the road, half-mile down a winding tree-lined path.

The only problem in this idyllic picture

(besides (1) they had already separated once & Jackass was presumably sleeping with his 350 pound ex-wife, & (2) Mom was working three menial jobs AND being sued for abandoning & looting the family business, leaving it worthless in her rush to follow this utter loser to Kentucky) 

I repeat, the only problem in this idyllic picture

was the dog that barked and chased their car every single time they went up or down the lane.  The dog was frenetic and crazy enough that it was actually catching their car and biting the bumper, damaging the vehicle.

According to Mom, they were driving the path up to the road one day when the dog once again begain chasing their car.  Mom was in the passenger seat.  If I know her at all, and I do, she was complaining in a loud shrewish voice:

“That God damned dog is biting the bumper of my car again.  Sonofabitch!”

Now, you know my mom loves dogs.  She loves dogs more than people or money or (definitely) cleanliness.  She literally told me, at the time of my brother’s wedding back in 1990, “My dogs have done more for me than my kids ever have.”  Yes, for the grammarians in the audience, she ended the sentence with a preposition.  I’m not making that part of the story up just to make her look bad.

The point is that HER dogs have done a lot for her.  Other people’s dogs . . . not so much.

As Mom tells the story, when she began complaining about the bumper eating dog for probably the 10,000th time, her husband replied (insert hideous marble-mouthed drawl here):

“Well, Mary, ya know, there’s a gun under yore seat.  Shoot it.”

So, like something out of Bonnie & Clyde, Mom pulled out the gun and shot the dog dead with a single bullet.  But that’s not the worst part.

Nope, the worst part is they left it in the lane.  They left it in front of the house.  They left it where the kids would come home from school and find it.

So in true backwoods fashion,

which I must say I do admire,

Mom later found one of her own dogs shot to death.

* * * * *

Jackass also enjoys telling a story about killing people, although he’s never told it to me.  I’ve only heard it third-hand.  No doubt, he’s aware of my desire to make a citizen’s arrest. 

But if I ever disappear . . .

Happy Mother’s Day.