If you left now….

So there is a story of my great-grandfather in Denmark who used to say to visitors to his home: “If you left now, what time would you get home”.  This was his way of saying it was time to leave.  Maybe not the most polite thing to say but neither is over staying one’s welcome.

Two things I should clarify at this point:

1) The grand-father in this story is from my human lineage not my blood relative.

2) He actually didn’t say those specific words since he was speaking Danish.  The quotes above therefore are more approximations of his statement – not to mention this story has undergone at least 3 hand-offs before it has reached you. As an aside have you ever played the telephone game?  Makes one wonder about eye-witness accounts!  Anyhow, if you want the Danish version of the statement it is:  Hvis du nu, hvad tid vil du komme hjem  (at least according to Babelfish.com 🙂 ).

So why am I telling you about this tonight????

Well it so happens that my Aunt and Uncle spent the night on Friday.  Because the four of them (my parents and relatives) went out to dinner and then settled down to watch the Women’s World Cup (I do enjoy soccer – or I should say football since this entry has a Danish flavor to it.  I mean who wouldn’t want to watch people chasing a ball around a big grass field???   Obviously I would rather be participating in the game but I’ll take a good game on the TV over some boring movie that I can’t follow).  The result of their activities was NO NIGHT WALK for the two well behaved dogs in the house.  We pups rolled with that though since they had popcorn while watching the game – I do love Skinny Pop.

In the morning, things got a little less pleasant.  First off, although it was a Saturday, my parents didn’t get up at our normal time.  Second, our visitors wanted to get on the road around 8 AM – later than my parents leave for work on most days.  This again delayed our walk.   I chilled out and waited as they ate their waffles but Sammy was less tolerant.  He kept telling my parents it was time to take our stroll around the block but they were way too busy chatting (and stuffing their faces) to pay any attention to him.  This level of inattention to his commentary is not something that was going to thwart my bro.   His first attempt to expedite their breakfast was to pull my mothers chair in with his teeth when she got up to refresh my uncles coffee.  Unfortunately, this did not get things moving along any faster.  Finally someone realized that he was “hinting” at going for a walk – but in all honesty, I can attest as a witness – that he said it 3 or 4 times already.  Everyone at the table thought the whole thing was a great joke and started talking about what Sambuca might do next to draw attention to the fact that they were dawdling over their morning repast. One comment was that he would start packing their car for them.  I am not going to speculate whether Sammy was inspired by the conversation or had already determined his next course of action but before 5 minutes had gone by a noise was heard near the front door.  When my mother went to investigate the cause of the disruption, she discovered that Sammy was dragging our visitors suitcase toward the front door.

This seemed to expedite the exodus of our visitors and we were soon on our walk.  This might be TMI, but we both relieved ourselves (Sammy twice) in short order – thus the urgency of his request that our aunt and uncle get out the door ASAP.

So in conclusion, I think this illustrates a number of key findings I have made:

1) Sammy is totally back from the land of the dead!  Viva Sambuca!

2) You may not think we understand what you are talking about but don’t count on it…we are a pretty clever species – not many others get free room and board without having to do serious work.

3) Never, ever overstay your welcome.

Mo-Tor

ps- I wish I had video documentation of these events so my version could not be questioned.  But alas, without these data it is up to all of you to determine for yourselves the extent this story is fact or fiction.  More soon.