Be Nice, Say Hi

I feel like my dog makes his way into almost every topic lately, blog included, so my apologies. He's a bit time consuming and, you guessed it, Real Estate isn't exactly sucking up large quantities of my day lately.

when I walk Norman outside a lot of people stop and either want to pet him or talk to me about what kind of dog he is, etc. I can't blame them, he's cute. It's always a little strange because I never know what to say if someone just comes up and starts talking directly to my dog. If I say nothing and just let Norman bounce around at their feet it looks like I'm irritated they've interrupted. If they rave about how cute he is and I say "thank you" I feel weird because, after all, I had nothing to do with his cuteness.. I didn't birth the dog or build him out of papermache. So what typically happens is something that I hate but do anyway. I go into dog-speak and fill the awkward silence on my end by responding to their "oh you're so cute, oh look at you" with "Say hi Norman, Say hi! Be nice, say hi Norman" and suddenly we're both speaking in the same tone a parent might use with an infant. Much like the infant, my dog can't talk, so it's sort of a weird exchange between everyone but it flows out of my mouth to fill in the time anyway.

So a couple days ago this group of Asian guys come walking down the sidewalk and Norman starts leaping around at their feet as we crossed paths, excited to meet new friends. One of the young men leans down and starts petting him. I just stood there at first but of course finally felt like I had to say SOMETHING so I said "Say hi! Be nice, say hi, say hi!" The young Asian man looked back up at me with a confused and half nervous face and muttered hesitantly ".. hi?"

From his accent I suddenly realized he wasn't just Asian-American, he was Asian-Asian and very Confused-Confused. The poor foreign guy thought I was telling HIM to "Be nice" and "say hi!" I'm sure after I said it about 3 times he finally decided he had placate me and say hi.

Now go out there today and be nice, say hi.
M.db