Deck of Cards (Part One)

We made it back home from our trip to the doctor's appointment safe and mostly sound. However, Puppy had a rough ride traveling to San Antonio. For some reason he had cards on his mind. I can only imagine that he saw someone smoking or the poster of the cigarette box outside a convenient store that may have triggered his obsession to be front and center on this morning.

So on our drive to the appointment; we have a habit of stopping at one of the newer convenient stores on our route. I’d say we were twenty miles before our stop when Puppy started to say he wanted to buy a box of playing cards. He mentioned even that he had money ($1.00) to buy it. He went on and on about needing to have these cards, and I quickly read between the lines to know that he would empty the box of the cards and modify the box to make it look like a cigarette box the very first chance he had.

I tried to deter the idea by giving him a list of rules he would need to follow if he was to purchase a deck of cards. He agreed to each one and promised to me that he was a big boy now and had every intention of following every rule I set out for him. I swear it was rather difficult to maintain my composure as I drove down the highway. I was laughing inside, where it counts. Puppy was lying through his teeth and giving himself an imaginary pat on the back for fooling me that he would keep his promises.

We made it to the store, got off the truck, walked inside, used the restrooms, grabbed a soda each, and made it to the cash register before he had enough time to look around for cards. We jumped inside the truck and I started it up. He buckled up and began to beg for more time to go back and look more carefully. I told him we had to hurry to make our appointment that was still some ways off, but that we would come back on our drive home.

He really had no choice, but he wasn’t a happy camper about it. Let’s just say that he made the next sixty plus miles unpleasant. He whined, cried, yelled, punched the armrest, punched the door and didn’t calm down until we were seeing buildings and started to look for a place to eat lunch. By this time, I wasn’t in the best of moods, so we opted for McDonald’s and made it to our appointment with 30 minutes to spare. I’ll have to get back to the story of our actual appointment next time. The story about this deck of cards is a long one I just noticed that Puppy can hear me typing at the computer and it is keeping him awake. So, this story will have to be continued.