Do you like dog?

This was a question asked of me many years ago by a youngster I uneffectionately called Einstein. He was not asking do I like dogs? like the animal. He was asking if I liked dog, as in food. Not dog food either, I mean dog!

Lets jump back 11 years. At that time Trillian and I were living in a rented townhouse. Many of our neighbours were great. Many were not! Some were really bad like the people on either side of us who every weekend would have a loud party. They would stick the kids at the others home so to insulate them from the music, foul language and drunkenness. This meant that every weekend we were beside drunken country and western party. Yeeha!

Then there was the mother of Einstein and his little brother I called Newton. They had an older sister. She was actually a really intelligent little girl now that I think of it. I didn't have a name for her. Anyway, E and N's mother was a breeder. She was having kids one after the other for the entire time we lived there. In the summer she would lock E and N out of the house while she looked after her babies, or napped or whatever. This meant that E and N, (4 and 3 years old) pretty much had to look after themselves for most of the day. They would play and fight and yell and blow these little fucking whistles, and ride their bikes too close to my car and yell and fight and blow whistles a little more. This generally started at around 6:30AM. I was going to University at the time, so most mornings I was either hungover or exhausted from playing video games till 5:00 so I really hated the two of them. Every time they left their whistles in the parking lot I would run over them with my car. I would have run over the bikes or other toys they left around, but I was never sure if they belonged to E and N or if they had pinched them from my place or someone I liked.

They were very bold kids too. They never hesitated to walk up to adults and engage them in conversation, or what passes for conversation to a 4 year old. I couldn't sit on my porch without one of the two coming over an bothering me.

The day of the "do you like dog?" coversation was like many other summer days at the townhouse. They started making noise first thing in the morning. They continued making noise through lunch, but at least by this time my hangover was nearly gone. Then they would disappear for a while. I think this must have been when their mother opened the door and let them in for dinner.

This was my time. Quite time. No one to bother me time and also usually dinner time. Then like now I BBQ'd almost every day. Chicken mostly now, steak mostly then. So I'm standing in front of my grill BBQ'in a great big prime rib steak, beer in one hand, tongs in the other when all of a sudden Einstein, the little bastard creeps up behind me and asks what I'm doing, scares the shit out of me. I tell him I'm cooking my dinner and turn back to my grill. But he doesn't go away. He starts asking all sorts of questions, non of which I can remember, except one.

"what are you cookin?"

I turned around and looked down at him and said. "I'm cooking your neighbours dog!" To which he responded, "hmmm, do you like dog?"

PS: his neighbours dog was a Rotti. BIG Fucker. I hated him too!