Like Cheech and Chong

The past few days have been early ones -- on the order of 5.00ish AM -- because the puppy's potty alarm is set to go off the instant dawn's dim drapery settles over the tips of the tops of the trees in the hayfield. If he's got a snooze button, I haven't found it. "Oh...my... G...it's...early," I'll groan, pulling cargo shorts over a left knee that lately, aches like an old war wound, and creep out the front door grateful that few venture down the lane at this hour and any who do, look as bleary-eyed and brain-dead as me.

About my knee, I tore a medial meniscus (the cartilage pad that serves as a cushion between femur and tibia) and medial collateral ligament one evening about seven years ago when training my big dog who was then a puppy. I wish I could say it was a college football injury resulting from a game-winning quarterback scramble John Elway would envy, but alas, it wasn't. The ligament is fine but it just occurred to me, this ache feels like that ache, the meniscus. I know, restrict motion, apply ice prn, take ibuprofen, and call my doctor if it worsens. Sigh.

Anyway, what I was going to tell you, before my knee so rudely interrupted, was a discovery I made while sipping coffee this morning and watching a bit of Sneakers (1992), one of my favorite films, starring Robert Redford. The dogs were engrossed in a post-breakfast game of Dino Dogs, imitating the T-Rex and Velocoraptor in the closing scenes of Jurassic Park (1993). Dino Dogs, by the way, is distinguished solely from its oriental martial arts cousin, FangWa, by the absence of sneezing. Both entail vigorous play, but FangWa intersperses play with episodes of vigorous sneezing. Don't ask me why, I didn't make up the rules.

In the midst of all this sensory overload, I noticed Redford was wearing a light blue chambray or denim shirt and khaki slacks. That's when the lights came on, my jaw dropped open, and the caffeine kicked in. Aside from the fact that I'm six inches taller, from the neck down, Redford and I have virtually the same body. Cut off our heads (metaphorically speaking, please), dress us in slacks and a loose fitting shirt and by golly, we're like Cheech and Chong. Well, not them exactly, but you get the idea.

It would be my luck, of course, to have the resemblance halt at the neck. I mean, how many women do you know who are going to smile and bat their eyelashes, their pupils having suddenly and uncontrollably dilated larger than silver dollars, if I were to attempt this as an opening line at a cocktail party: "Ahem, Robert Redford and I have similar body types." That's what I thought, not very many. I may as well scribble the word "boring" across my forehead right now in indelible black Sharpie. Nope, about the best I can do is write about it and let sleeping dogs lie -- which, by the way, they're both doing, at last.

Whew.

(Creative Commons image by jb2.0 via Flickr)