O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
There was a towel left on the bathroom floor in the house that I share with The Blonde Woman and The Gray-Haired Man1.
The towel, I’m going to assume, fell from the rack this morning as The Blonde Woman and The Gray-Haired Man were hurrying to get ready for work—harrowed as they often are at 6:30 a.m. while I snooze on their bed—and failed to notice the towel on the tiled floor.
Now, I know that I shouldn’t enter the bathroom, lift my leg and pee on the towel. I know that this will anger the both of them, but I am going to pee on it anyway because peeing on the towel will please me.
While briefly ricocheting between decisions—to pee or not to pee, that is the question—I decided to stop being blindly obedient to my owners and act, for once, on my own free will and accord.
Sure, my micturating on the towel will probably result in their withholding a Filet Mignon and Bacon-flavored Pup-Peroni or a slice of American cheese from me, but I’m tired of being entirely subservient to these ideas that I’m supposed to follow without a modicum of critical thought.
“Buster, this is how you ought to think because this is how good dogs behave,” The Gray-Haired Man will say. “Don’t think about it. Just do what you’re told, and believe what you’re told to believe.”
Listen, I’m not planning on going full Nietzsche on these folks—I’m not looking to become an Überpug—but I’m also not willing to subscribe to their brand of mind control, docilely licking my own ass2 without thinking for myself.
Humans have developed systems and ideologies—such as religion or, say, nationalism—as ways of controlling the thoughts and behaviors of the masses, manufacturing their consent in situations that do not befit their best interests.
Does my act of defiance, lifting my leg and peeing on the towel, make me a criminal or a domestic terrorist? Does acting independently of prescribed ideas make me a bad dog?
Maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to be a pug who walks in lock-step with everything that my masters tell me. Maybe I don’t feel like capitulating to the human machine.
Bob Dylan wrote that “the masters make the rules/for the wise men and the fools.” Allow that to set in for a second. My face might be flat, but I haven’t been flattened quite yet.
It’s true. Peeing on the towel in the bathroom could mean that I don’t get a Pup-Peroni or cheese, but at least I can wake up with a version of myself that I respect.
At least I can look myself in the face, albeit flat, and know that I made up my own mind and wasn’t blindly obedient to the rules and doctrines of my masters because I was too lazy to think for myself.
I’m going pee on that towel now, lift my leg and release my bladder. I’ll make up my own mind and will live with the consequences. I’m a pug, but this is much better than being a sheep.
- Again, The Gray-Haired Man has me writing his damn column, paying me with a Filet Mignon and Bacon-flavored Pup-Peroni or a slice of American cheese. ↩︎
- It should be noted that I’m not being literal here. The composition of my stout frame makes said activity impossible. ↩︎