Widow's Voice

A Dog Eat Dog World

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Who do I complain to about the discrepancy of dog years compared to human years?  I want to know the person in charge who came up with the math of 7 years of a dog’s life is equal to 1 year of a human’s life. 

I’m confused by acceleration of dog time; I’ve watched a dog for an entire day.  He gets up, goes outside to the bathroom – without the hassle of flushing – comes back in, heads to the water bowl to lap up a few drops of refreshing H2O, walks around the kitchen eating droplets of food that fell to the floor, saunters over to the living room – tail wags slowly the entire time, rubbing it in my face his constant state of bliss – circles around a few times before he collapses on the same spot he was before his excursion, and then takes another nap –  a nap, by the way, for which he doesn’t have to wake up for any appointments. 

So, you may ask yourself, when does this dog get up again? Whenever he damn well pleases, that’s when.  And when he does wake up from his 100th nap of the day, he gives a big sprawling stretch, and then – to add icing on the cake in case life wasn’t great enough – begins to lick himself.  So 365 days of this routine is equal to 7 years?!

What about my days?   I get up early, get three kids ready for school, rush off to work – everyday I’m one gapers delay from being late – work until after dinner, drive  home, go over the kids homework, do laundry, clean the house, eat dinner, put them to bed, and then I go to bed – without the ability of licking myself.  And 365 days of this is equal to 1 year?

I want new math for the widow/widowers of the world.  One year of our life should at least be 1.78 years.  That will be our base number.  From there we can begin computing all the extra time figures: an additional .49 years per child, a full-time job is .73,   for every time someone has said to you, “At least you weren’t married long, there aren’t as many memories”, go ahead and pile on another .31 years to your age.  Then another .58 for every family gathering you went to where they completely ignored your spouse even existed,  .36 for every movie you had to sit through where the spouse dies,  .41 for every friend who stopped calling you, and .27 for every in-law you had to comfort while you were grieving.

We can start calculating the new math from the age we are when our spouse dies.  In my case, my wife died when I was 38 years-old and I just turned 42.  So when I am walking down the street, I want to walk by a bus stop and hear strangers say:

Person 1: “Hey isn’t that Matt Croke?  I think today is his birthday.”
Person 2: “It is.  I heard he is 42 today.”
Person 1: “Wow, that’s 47.36 in widow years.”
Person 2: “How did you get .36 at the end?”
Person 1: “He took his kids to see “Up” and nobody told him in advance that the wife dies in the first 20 minutes of the movie.”
Person 2: “What is Disney’s problem with all the adult-dying themes they do?  That had to suck to watch.”
Person 1: “Yep, had tears coming down his face right there in the theater with his kids sitting next to him.”
Person 2: “Boy, it sure is a dog eat dog world.”