“I was reading today’s paper and the back page of section D has pictures of the animals up for adoption,” wrote Debra Cantley of Charleston in her letter to me. “One picture is of a sweet little dog that is 10 years old. The ad says the dog is there because the family is moving, but how can someone do that? My dog is 12 years old. I’d move into a cardboard box before I’d even consider doing something like that. It hurts to think what this little dog is going through, how his heart is breaking. He’s been thrown away and doesn’t know why.

“I hope this little dog finds a good, loving home. I wish I could take him. It just breaks my heart.”

I’ve been haunted by dogs like the one that touched Cantley–those grey-muzzled, rheumy-eyed animals who seem to be struggling to maintain their dignity after finding themselves dumped in a shelter, usually after their former owner has claimed they can’t take Fido or Fluffy with them when they move.

Like Cantley, I can’t fathom how an owner could reward years of loyal loving in such a dismissive fashion, although I’ve recently learned how difficult it can be to find a home for an animal that is no longer frisky.

When Gypsy, a timid cat, came to live with us, she spent the first month in hiding. It took some time to get her to trust us, but she gradually became one of the gang. And then somehow, she became the gang’s target. Even though all our animals have been neutered and are gentle with each other, there’s something about the quiet, meek Gypsy that causes them to bully, chase, and pick on her so ruthlessly that, to give her some peace, we began to lock her away in one room.

But the one room restriction hasn’t been well-received, and after months of Gypsy having to choose between being pummeled or being locked up alone, we decided it might be kinder to try and find her a new home.

Considering that Gypsy is highly decorative, we didn’t expect it would be too hard to place her. She’s healthy, declawed, litter trained, quiet. She doesn’t weave around feet or do the feline speedbump thing like our other cats do, and since she loves nothing more than to sit on a lap and watch television, we thought she’d be great company for an older person who lives alone.

Except every time we thought we’d found a potential new home, they’d decline when we told Gypsy’s age. She was mature when we got her, so we don’t know for certain, but the vet estimates her to be 8 or 9, which is middle age for an indoor cat.

So if it’s this difficult to find a home for a cat that isn’t even a senior, how hard must it be to place one that is truly old? 

Since we’re fortunate enough that there’s no rush to rehome her, we’re simply continuing what we’ve been doing for months, until we find her a new home. Some might expect this experience might’ve made me slightly more sympathetic toward those who take their older animals to the shelter, but it hasn’t. Not a bit.

Owning a pet is a commitment, an until-death-us-do-part kind of deal. They’re living, feeling creatures with so much to offer.

In Animal Lessons in Love, author Mary Lou Randour explains how animals can teach us how to live more responsibly and joyously. 

“The lessons animals teach us about trust are not abstract or symbolic, but concrete and dramatic.

“We directly experience the love of the animals with whom we share our lives - love without reservation, judgment, or expectation. The animals by our side don’t care what we look like, how successful we are, whether we are fat or thin, rich or poor. They simply love us. We benefit from their attention and enjoy their unconditional love, a love that never doubts our motives, neither wavering nor withdrawing.

“Adult humans, on the other hand, complicate love. We tend to love ambivalently. Our love comes mixed with other emotions: lack of trust, fear of loss of control, hesitancy to expose our vulnerability, doubt, and a resistance to relinquishing our own self-interest. Animals can teach us about love, about becoming vulnerable, and about leaving doubt behind.”

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. In spite of having spent the past year or two being thoroughly turned off by the “go green” movement, I recently took a survey and discovered that much to my surprise, I’m an environmentalist.

Who knew? I thought I was just cheap.

The survey started by asking me to rate my enthusiasm for “greenness” on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most passionate and 10 being thoroughly uninterested. While I’ll readily admit I’m quite fond of our planet, I’m also fond of air conditioning, showering daily and individually wrapped cheese slices, all of which I assumed would disqualify me from being green. I gave myself an 8.

As I progressed through the questions, however, I learned I’m far more environmentally conscientious than I realized. I shop at yard sales, have my own garden, use energy-saving light bulbs, drive a fuel-efficient car. I’m clearly just a step or two away from freebasing granola.

Still, the survey confused me. Made me wonder what it was about the green movement that always rankles me so.

I got my answer this past weekend, after watching a number of home-improvement shows that featured one dramatic kitchen or bathroom renovation after another - all of which they claimed to be “green” since they used products made from recycled material.

Except they glossed over the fact that the cabinets they tore out and destroyed were completely functional. Most of what they trashed looked far better than any I’ve ever owned.

So while I’m all for trying to leave the daintiest of carbon footprints, it seems like it would be more green to be content with what we have rather than throwing it away because we simply don’t like how it looks.

Somewhere along the line, the green product manufacturers recognized they could charge more and people would happily pay it. Having something that identified you as being green became a status symbol, so consumers lustily embraced the green giant.

I’m sure many consumers are truly environmentally conscious, but I bet far more bend that way simply because it makes them look good.

If I were going to put a color on hypocrisy, it would be green.

The way I see it, if you truly care about the environment, you find ways to make do with less and to make what you already have work better instead of being so quick to replace it.

I realize now that the reason the results of that quiz left me feeling stunned was because, like all the other sheep who were drawn to the green, my idea of what it takes to be environmentally minded had been influenced and tainted by all these new green products I’d been hearing about. Since I can’t (or don’t) buy them, I felt that meant that I didn’t care.

When in reality, what I don’t care for is having the wrong reason to follow a trend.

When X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the latest of the X-Men movies, was released, my husband, daughter and I were there for opening night. Like so many others, we’re fans of shows about characters with superpowers. Ironman. Spiderman. Watchmen. The Spirit.

For Geoff and I, it’s a love that lingers from childhood. We enjoy the nostalgia of seeing our old friends on the big screen. But for many, the attraction is larger than that. Ours is a world hungry for heroes, desperate for someone-real or fictional-that we can look up to. Someone we can trust to do the right thing, no matter the cost. 

I expect that many, if asked about heroes, would say they’re something that ends with childhood. That they’re a need we outgrow. That the world-saving role model whose identity can be hidden by glasses is so impossible it’s laughable. Yet we still like the concept so much that Hollywood is filming the flicks one after another. 

Most of us are lucky as kids that we can find easy heroes, but as we mature, we lose track of what it was about those heroes that we admired. The ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound will always be cool, but that in itself isn’t all that heroic. It’s the to-the-core goodness, the willingness to die if need be to protect those we love, that we looked up to and wanted to emulate.

“As you get older, it is harder to have heroes,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. “But it is sort of necessary.”

I’ve always been lucky to have easy access to heroes, ones I didn’t have to buy comic books or go to the theater in order to see. My father’s my hero. He always has been, and always will be.

He and my mother have been the steadfast ones I could count on, regardless of the circumstances. They can calm my fears now as well as when I was 10.

I love it when others talk to me about Dad. His former coworkers can make him sound superhuman, like a character from a classic movie or novel, someone larger-than-life and respected by all. (And feared by a few.)

He’s compassionate, yet tough. Sensible, yet silly. His morals and values are so ironclad that I find it unfathomable to imagine him doing anything that barely even tickles of wrong. 

But it’s Dad’s fearlessness that I most admire. He never allowed his lack of experience at something to deter him from attempting to do it. So what if he’d never re-roofed a house? He’d say that even the fastest and most efficient roofer had to start somewhere. He’d puzzle it out and learn as he’d go.

The older I get, the more my dad seems to come out in me. I’ve adopted his fearlessness with what I’ll take on (although I lack his capacity to complete what I start). Like Dad, I can putter around in the yard for hours on end. So long as I’m outdoors, I’m content. And to follow Dad’s lead, I’ve never been motivated by money or position; shiny, pricey things have little appeal; and I’d rather be home than anywhere else.

I think I picked a good hero. I’ll never outgrow him. 

I have too much left to learn.  

At the end of May, I wrote about mediums, psychics, and grief-topics that my friend Becky and I had been discussing quite a bit in the months since the death of her son and the approach of what should’ve been my second daughter’s seventh birthday. 

In the days after that column appeared, I received some interesting and thoughtful emails, a few of which I wanted to share.

“Too many people grieve themselves to death, and their loved ones would never want that,” wrote Cathy Graceson of South Charleston. “Instead of holding onto their grief, they should try to find ways to use their love for the person they lost into something that helps others.

“Just think of how much the Susan G. Komen movement has done, and it was all because of what Komen’s sister, Nancy, chose to do with her grief. It was respectful of her sister’s life and has done so much to enhance the battle against breast cancer. Because Nancy channeled her pain into a positive, she made her sister’s time on earth one that has become familiar to many.

“Instead of continuing to enhance the loss and grow the pain, we should try to use the experience to help others.”

Becky’s now trying to do just that, and has started a program in her son’s memory to help other children with glycogen storage disease. (To make a donation, visit http://www.joshuaconrad.org.) 

Several readers who asked that their names not be used shared stories about experiences they’d had that couldn’t be easily explained. Among them was one from a widow whose late husband continued to have such a presence even after his death that it became a common occurrence, when she went to a restaurant, for waiters to hand her a menu, then put one at the at the empty seat across from or beside her, as if someone was sitting there, too.

“When I’d tell them I was alone, they’d do a double-take, realize the chair was empty, and then apologize profusely, often swearing they’d seen someone there. A few even crossed themselves, which I found especially amusing since self-crossing was something he almost obsessively did.

“People used to describe Frank as being ‘larger than life,’” she said. “I guess he’s larger than death, too.”

My favorite email, though, came from Barbara Postlethwait of Hurricane, and I doubt I’ll ever receive a gift like the Barbara gave me in the last lines of her note.

“This letter is a long time coming, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write it. Every time I read about you and Camille, I’ve wanted to thank you for sharing her story.

“My sister, Rosemary Sauzer, was just starting chemo and radiation when we read about it [Camille being diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy] in the paper. Rosemary had metastasized to colon cancer and she was waiting to have a treatment in the cancer area at Thomas Hospital when she read your column and said to me, ‘If this sweet little baby girl can handle treatments and pain, then I can, too.’

“Rosemary was mentally handicapped. She was 49 but with the mind of a 10-year-old, yet she absolutely LOVED to read. She couldn’t comprehend a lot of what she read, but she still loved reading. It was something our Mother encouraged us to do when we were young and it stayed with her.

“Rosemary had treatments for many months, but nothing seemed to help. Every time she was in pain or frustrated, she would say to me, ‘Camille did it, so I can, too.’

“Sometimes she would ask me if, when she died, I thought she might meet Camille, and of course I told her yes.  I told her that they’d probably become best friends, and she would always smile when I said that and say, ‘Maybe I can take her for a ride on my bicycle.’ Rosemary loved riding her bike.

“When I read the article in the paper about Camille’s birthday [Camille would’ve turned 7 on June 1], I knew I had to write and thank you for sharing her story then and now, and to let you know what a difference Camille made in my sister’s life and how she dealt with her cancer.

“Two days before Rosemary died in 2004, she told me she was going to see Mom and the little girl, Camille. I’m positive the two of them are riding on Rosie’s bike right now, with Camille on the handlebars.” 

Last weekend, my daughter and I ran up to my parent’s house to see my brother Kurt and his fiancé, Kurt’s three kids, and his oldest daughter’s boyfriend, who were all in from Ohio to attend a graduation party for a friend’s daughter.

As we sat around the kitchen table, digesting an obscene amount of pizza, the conversation drifted from college psychology classes to the many different types of phobias there are.

“Did you know the word for the fear of long words is actually one of the longest words?” my nephew Zac said. “It starts out hippo-something.”

Zac had unknowingly provided Celeste with the opportunity of a lifetime. 

“Oh, you mean hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia?” my just-out-of sixth grader casually said.

All heads turned her way.

“Say that again,” my dad said.

“Hip-po-pot-o-mon-stro-ses-quip-e-dalio-pho-bia,” said Celeste.

With few opportunities to smoothly drop her favorite word into conversation, I could tell she was relishing each delicious syllable.

“It means the fear of extremely long words,” she said.

Celeste had picked up the word from her friend, Caroline Evans, when she’d spent the night at our house a month or two ago. There is little that charms our family of word geeks more than a guest who uses a word like hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

When researching the word, I learned there’s some dispute over the spelling, with a few pundits claiming it’s often deliberately misspelled to make the word even longer.

According to the online Wiktionary, “hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian is an extension of sesquipedalian with monstrum ‘monster’ and a truncated, misspelled form of hippopotamus, intended to exaggerate the length of the word itself and the idea of the size of the words being feared; combined with phobia.”

When I was in middle school (called junior high then), I learned the word antidisestablishmentarianism with the hopes that I’d be able to work it into conversation with my history teacher, but never had the chance. (These days, I feel blessed when I manage to retain a person’s name for longer than a minute before it vanishes into the mystical Neverland that exists between my left ear and my right.)

I find it heartening, though, that this word for the fear of long words is something that’s come up with kids here in Charleston as well as teenagers living in bad-driver country, where my nephew resides.

And I like that my girl is brave enough not to be afraid of long words.

Although I wonder if there’s a word for those who fear having to spell it.

Growing up, I was fascinated with ghosts, psychics, and most anything paranormal. Over the years, my interest faded until my only forays into mystical matters were when I caught the occasional episode of “Medium” or a middle-of-the-night airing of “Crossing Over.” But a few months ago, something happened that dragged my old interest to the forefront again.

I had gone to Flatwoods for the funeral of my friend Becky’s son, Josh, who died at the age of 19 from complications of GSD-1A (glycogen storage disease). Although it was getting late when the service was over, I stopped for coffee with friends, then was about to head for home when-even though I’d visited the Flatwoods outlet mall bookstore just a few hours before-I felt compelled to go back.

Upon entering the store for the second time in a day, the first thing I saw was an audio book titled, “We Are Their Heaven” by Allison DuBois, the real life psychic whose life inspired the television show, “Medium.”

I read the back cover and decided the book seemed interesting enough to help keep me awake and alert on the drive home, so I handed over some money and then got on the road.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes of listening to the book before I realized my purchase hadn’t been meant for me. It was for Becky. Still, I couldn’t stop listening, and even though I sent her my copy the very next day, I ordered another for me.

From a literary viewpoint, the book has some flaws, but for someone who is grieving, especially the loss of a child, there is so much wisdom and perspective and comfort to be found that I can’t recommend it enough. You don’t even need to be a believer in mediums to gain from what Allison DuBois has to say.

I’ve experienced enough bizarre happenings in my life that I’m no longer a skeptic, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wary of what I’m witnessing and trying to see how it might be a scam. A good “for instance” happened a month or so back, when I was invited to participate in a group reading with a medium from Ohio, and I found myself growing increasingly annoyed with the generalities she was tossing out.

“The person coming through-they died of complications of diabetes.”

Oh, c’mon. This is West Virginia. What are the odds there isn’t someone here who has lost a loved one to diabetes?

Somewhat amused, I started jotting down notes.

“Was someone cleaning their stove right before they came here?” the medium asked. “And when they were doing it, they made a loud bang?”

I said nothing, even though the very last thing I’d done before leaving that day had been to clean the stove, and while doing so, had dropped the iron burner, which made an explosive sound when it fell.

Lots of people probably wipe off the stove before they go out, I reasoned. I’m not raising my hand.

She mentioned several more things, all of which absolutely applied to me, but were still general enough that I said nothing. Frustrated, the psychic apologized for having to be repulsive, then said, “Okay. He’s telling me this person he’s here for says that crap is the theme of her life. Literal crap, like dog poop. That all they ever do is clean poo.”

She had me there. I raised my hand.

Just that day, I’d started an email with the words, “Crap seems to be the recurring theme of my life.” (We have three dogs and three cats. One of them is sneaky and gross.)

So while the psychic definitely seemed to be getting something, how much of it was coming from the “other side” and how much was observational, I don’t know. Still, my favorite uncle Edgar was clearly on the line for a while, giving details so specific I have no doubt it was him.

But tickled as I was to have my uncle come through, I was still disappointed. He wasn’t the one I’d hoped to hear from.Tomorrow, June 1, would’ve been my daughter Camille’s seventh birthday. So hungry was I to hear from her that, unlike with my uncle, had the medium said anything at all that I could’ve twisted into having been from Camille, I would’ve been waving my hand.

Still, even having lost a child of my own, I’m finding it hard to help Becky deal with her grief. We’re at such incongruent levels–her caught up with feeling she could’ve done something more; me tangled up in the feeling that I’ve moved on too well. And yet even with the two of us at such different places, this DuBois book helped us both. Becky has now listened to it several times, while I’ve gone through my bound copy with a highlighter, marking each place where I found perspective or peace. There’s something in how DuBois phrases what she believes that make it seem both logical and apparent.

“Your loved ones don’t want you to suffer for the rest of your life, paying homage to them through your tears,” writes DuBois. “They sit there with you while you cry, and the harder you cry, the louder you get to them. Do you want to share only sorrow and pain with them daily? I think they would like to share in your happy times.”

Becky’s son was taken too young. As was Camille. As are so many more. If we allow their loss to stop us from living, it doesn’t honor their memory or prove how much we loved them. According to DuBois, those who have died want to continue to share in our lives, and we should love them enough to live large for ourselves, because it’s also for them.

More information on glycogen storage disease can be found at http://joshuaconrad.org. 

Even though our back yard is fenced, the occasional rabbit will become captivated by the voluptuous virgin sod–grass seldom sullied by lawnmower blades–and will burrow beneath our fence so it can lunch on our lawn. 

I had just let our dogs out in the yard and was standing at the kitchen window to watch when I saw a small brown bundle dart past, closely followed by an equally fast-moving gray blur. I’d seen the dog and bunny show a few times before, with our gray terrier, Chewie, in hot pursuit of the invading wild rabbit, but this time, it was different. A few seconds after Gray chased Brown into the weeds, out of sight, Gray shot back out like a bullet, this time with Brown in hot pursuit. 

Apparently the rabbit, unable to quickly access his exit, chose to change gears from flight back to fight. Unaccustomed to being the chase-e, Chewie beat a hasty retreat. Like my bunny-fleeing dog, I never knew rabbits could be aggressive.

Since Chewie already has image issues, rather than risk his massive male ego being damaged by a wascally wiolent wabbit, I hurried outside and called for the dogs, distracting Chewie long enough for the rabbit to find his hole and escape. 

Just a short while later, after returning to the kitchen, I picked up a book my husband was reading, The Book of General Ignorance, and began flipping through the pages, stopping on a dog-eared paged where the word “rabbits” seemed to leap off the page. The timing seemed curiously coincidental, so I read the passage.

“What’s the word for Napoleon’s most humiliating defeat?”

The answer was “Rabbits.”

According to the book, in 1807, Napoleon was in high spirits, having signed a landmark treaty between France, Russia, and Prussia. To celebrate, he suggested the Imperial Court enjoy an afternoon of shooting rabbits.

The Imperial hunting party was large enough it could have been mistaken for a regiment, and Napoleon entrusted the arrangements to his chief-of-staff, Alexandre Berthier.  Berthier was an energetic, detail-oriented person, one who normally managed the Emperor’s affairs flawlessly. Not wanting to leave anything to chance and fearing that nature might fail to provide the hunting party with enough adorable little targets to shoot at, Berthier “bought hundreds of rabbits to ensure that the Imperial Court had plenty of game to keep them occupied.”

And so, on the designated day, the hunting party, led by Emperor Napoleon, arrived at the appointed place, escorted by Guardsmen, Equerries, and various others of his household, and followed by a host of kings, marshals, barons, generals, counts, and lesser folk.

But then, when the gamekeepers released the quarry, rather than flee in all directions, the rabbits–hundreds of rabbits–made straight for Napoleon.

It turns out that Berthier had purchased tame-not wild-rabbits, and those tame rabbits mistakenly believed that instead of being hunted and killed, they were about to be fed.

“Rather than fleeing for their life,” the book continues, “they spotted a tiny man in a big hat and mistook him for their keeper, who they happily thought was bringing them food. The hungry rabbits stormed toward Napoleon at their top speed of 35 mph.”

Unable to stop the stampeding rabbits, Napoleon had no choice but to run, beating off the hungry hares with his bare hands as he fled.  

“The rabbits did not relent and drove the emperor back to his carriage, while his underlings thrashed vainly at the rabbits with horsewhips. The Emperor of France sped off in his coach, comprehensively beaten and shamed.”

So apparently, the aggressiveness of rabbits is not something new.

And if it weren’t for Waterloo, Napoleon might’ve gone down in history as the first man embarrassed when his hare line didn’t recede. 

It’s hard to remember which of the recent stock market crashes it was that had my bosses bemoaning their losses, but while they were grumbling I realized my own mood was completely unaffected by Wall Street. I suppose there’s something to be said about having so little to lose, about having hovered so close to the ground that these often-scraped knees have developed thick skin.

According to David Henry Sterry in the Huffington Post, one of the “unexpected benefits of the worst economic depression in a century is that for the first time in history, poor people are happier than rich people.”

Since the lifestyle of many lower-income people barely changed with the downturn, some are taking some pleasure in the misfortune and misery the previously wealthy are suffering. Although I’m not enjoying the distress the once-golden are experiencing, having the playing field even a smidgen more level does seem to make my own struggles less demoralizing.

Writes Sterry, “Many rich people … have lost boats, airplanes, luxury automobiles, jet skis, two or three homes, and large portions of their wealth. Certainly many have been the victims of their own greed, but many have also been swindled, deceived and lied to. And many rich people have never been poor, so they have no idea just how hard it is to be an American without money. Whereas poor people, having been poor most of their lives, are used to it.”

Most of those who lost fortunes still have ample cash to live comfortably, just not as much as before. Tough times for them are still far more secure than many of us will ever be blessed enough to experience. Before this recession began, those who lost sleep worrying about where to get the money to fix the furnace or pay crazy deductibles are still losing sleep for the very same reasons, but knowing some overpaid financial guru no longer has a vacation home and matching Hummers lessens the sting.

I’ve reached an age where my rose-colored glasses have bifocal lenses, but I can’t help but hope we’ll be able to find ways to force positives from this downturn, to have it serve as an awakening to reassess our priorities, learn lessons in restraint, appreciation, empathy, and compassion. To recognize that while money can buy security, happiness is something we choose.

While appearing on Good Morning America this week, actor Michael J. Fox was talking about his battle with Parkinson’s disease and how he’s managed to maintain such a positive outlook.

“It’s all about making choices,” Fox said. “The only unavailable choice was whether or not to have Parkinson’s. Everything else was up to me.”

Wealth can’t protect us from being dealt a bad hand. How we choose to play it is our decision to make.

Making the news this week was a story about South Korean scientists who, through cloning, have produced four beagles that appear normal in daylight, but put the pups in the dark or under ultraviolet light and the Rovers glow red.

Surprisingly, growing glowing cloned creatures isn’t unheard of, as scientists in the U.S., Japan, and Europe have already managed to clone fluorescent mice and pigs, but this glowing litter of “Ruppies” (a combination of “ruby” and “puppies”) is a first. 

Frankly, luminous dogs are the only laboratory creation that makes any sense. Where’s the need for a pigmented pig or a radiant rodent? Speaking as one who shares her quarters with three canine speed bumps, a dog I’m less likely to trip over on middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom has some appeal.

The actual scientific reasoning behind creating fluorescent dogs has more to do with developing the ability to insert genes with specific traits that could lead to the development of new treatments for certain diseases, but I can’t help imagining the possible scenarios that might’ve inspired the scientists to start with glow-in-the-dark dogs.

I wonder if those scientists might not have had a dog like Molly, a solid black German shepherd I had as a teenager. Molly was likely still cutting puppy teeth when she first realized that, after dark, she was undetectable to her visually inferior human companions. 

Take Molly out in the yard at night and she’d sometimes race far ahead, beyond the reach of the porch light. I would relax, often strolling down the yard to await her return, believing she’d gone far enough that she couldn’t possibly have slipped into the shadows, then backtracked. Yet time and again, that devious dog would lurk in the darkness, stealthily stalking her target until the moment was perfect for her to spring. She’d allow weeks to pass between scares, always just long enough for me to let down my guard before striking again. 

Molly got such a kick out of her little game that I suppose even if I’d had the ability to make her glow in the dark, I wouldn’t have used it. With Murry, however, I’m not so sure.

Murry is the most loyal of dogs, taking his job as my constant companion so literally that, day or night, he’s seldom more than a few inches from my side. The problem is that the side he’s no more than a few inches away from constantly changes–front side, left side, front side again, right, back, left, front-and while that’s manageable during the day when I’m fully awake, if I get up at night he changes positions nearly as often, except instead of standing, he flops at my feet.

Imagine walking down a dark hall, pausing to turn on the light, then taking a step forward only to find that a 40-lb. lump has soundlessly materialized in your immediate path.

It’s easy to see how a dog that glows in the dark would have some appeal.

Perhaps I’ll get lucky and the scientists will develop a pooch that, when it’s about to abruptly and unpredictably change its direction, will beep.

I expect most everyone has experienced this: You make what you believe to be a striking change to your appearance-trying a drastic haircut or dramatic new hair color, switching from glasses to contacts, swapping sober browns and muted pastels for vivid oranges and eye-numbing pinks-only to discover that no one seems to notice. . . 

. . . thus making what briefly seemed like a courageous transformation into something that feels more like an embarrassing waste of time, which is what I was talking to my husband and daughter about (attempts at trying something new that misfire or never quite gel) that compelled Geoff to launch into a story:

“These two men were out camping in the desert when, just an hour or two after they’d called it a night, one man awakened and looked around, then woke up his friend and asked him to describe what he saw, at which point the friend pondered for a moment before saying, ‘Astronomically speaking, I see that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of other planets; and meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow, and . . .’

Celeste interrupted with, “I’ve heard this before-the first guy had some. . .” she started to say, but stopped herself, and even though I could tell it was hard for her to hold back on blurting the punch line (first man dismisses all the profound observations his friend is making as he looks at the sky rather than noticing the obvious-that their tent has been stolen), she managed to let him finish so he could make his point about how we all miss stuff that’s happening right under our noses (or in that particular case, above their noses) because we’re so easily distracted by a condition called, “sustained inattentional blindness”:

Coined by a man named Rezso Balint way back in 1907, sustained inattentional blindness is the “well-known phenomenon where we fail to notice what’s happening in our surroundings because we’re allowing ourselves to be absorbed in the inspection of something else,” which is a high-falutin’ way of saying we can’t see the forest for the trees (or are so intent on seeing the one thing that we fail to notice the even larger thing that’s dancing around, waving its arms, right in front of us), and for those of you who want to experience sustained inattentional blindness, you can do so by going online

http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php 

so you can watch a video where you’re instructed to count the number of times the team dressed in white passes the ball while ignoring the passes of the team dressed in black (some variations of the video include a challenge by the lecturer suggesting men tended to count the passes more accurately than women) and at the end of the video, it’s revealed that …

. . . well, I won’t say what’s revealed, but it’s a perfect example of how easily people can be lured into focusing their attention away from something that’s happening right under their noses—kind of like a column that’s only one sentence.