July 2020
To the UPS guy who gave my dog a treat –
My boy’s name is Clyde. He’s rambunctious, silly, high-reactive, and full of joy and energy. If I were a better dog-mom, I’d take him to the off-leash dog park more often. But the nice one (Prairie Moraine) is an hour roundtrip, and it makes the close one seem, well, less nice. And I hate going on weekends because it’s usually crowded.
All this is to explain that I like taking my boy on long walks through my neighborhood and neighboring neighborhoods. I want to keep it interesting for him, give him a chance to see different sights and smell different smells than the ones he has close to us.
That day, we turned left out of Oakbridge, looped around Wolf Street, and backtracked along N High Point. We must have accidentally walked your delivery route because it felt like you were following us. I guess we were technically following you; we just had the sneaky sense to stay ahead.
Like runners in a close sprint, we took turns taking the lead, never quite meeting. All along Wolf Street, we’d pass you while you delivered a package, and you’d return the favor by breezing past us in your truck, just to pull over a few yards ahead. It was almost a game – Clyde and I walked slow and steady as the proverbial tortoise, while you bolted ahead in fits and spurts like the silly hare.
You probably get why this is such an obsession now. In the olden days, the days Before, when we all understood the world and it turned on its axis in very predictable ways, we probably wouldn’t have noticed each other. It would have been whatever – the UPS guy and the girl walking her dog. A totally normal Saturday morning. Or afternoon. I can’t remember the time of day anymore.
But we’re not in the days Before. We’re months into quarantine. We’re months into isolation and aloneness. And I live alone. I hate to broadcast it – I hate admitting I’m a single woman living alone. In fact, as an added precaution, I’ve adopted my aunt’s method of using only my first initial in shipping addresses. That way, you don’t know if you’re delivering to a man or woman, though I don’t know any men who use only their first initial in their shipping address. Why would they bother? They have nothing to hide. So this method probably backfires anyway. Oh well, old habits die hard.
Anyway, I’ve been living in quarantine all by my lonesome, just an overly energetic dog and fidgety cat to keep me company, so maybe you can understand why I’d feel a sense of camaraderie with the UPS guy just going about his business delivering packages.
I bet you felt it, too. Maybe you also live alone, or maybe you just spend a lot of hours of your workday pretty isolated, driving from house to house. I bet it was worse before quarantine. Before quarantine, you were always out delivering packages when everyone was at work. There was next to no chance you’d get to run into anyone, next to no chance you’d get to exchange some pleasantries with another human.
I wonder if quarantine actually made your workday a little more social? Now that we’re all in lockdown, many people crave little social interactions they can’t get anywhere else, so maybe they jump at the chance to say hello to the UPS delivery guy.
Then again, if your progress down Wolf Street is any indication, that’s not the case at all.
After we turned onto N High Point, our paths finally effectively crossed. Clyde and I came close just as you pulled over to take a package to someone’s porch. You hopped out quickly, certainly before you grabbed the package for delivery. I think you wanted to say hello.
Clyde got excited, tail wagging so hard his entire body wiggled with the force of it. He wasn’t expecting anything from you – he just loves people and getting attention.
“Would he like a treat?” you asked me.
A rhetorical question, to be sure, because of course the dog would want a treat. We both knew you were really asking if he was allowed to have a treat.
I wonder if under other circumstances, the single woman walking her dog would have said no. Maybe under other circumstances, I would have said no. I don’t know the norms of suburban Madison since I only just started staying home all day every day. Before, I was one of those people who’d never be home to see you because I was always at work. I don’t know if handing treats to dogs is a thing most UPS delivery guys do.
But I grew up in the Texas hill country. My parents still have their house there. It’s a lovely ranch-style home nestled on the top of a hill surrounded by their twelve acres of property. You can’t even see their house from the road. Their driveway is just shy of a quarter-mile long.
And we always had dogs. I don’t think Dad’s ever gotten over losing his first golden retriever, but Mom likes having the company, so she’d sneak a dog home whenever he wasn’t looking. We’d always have one or two dogs in the front yard, off-leash of course. That’s de rigueur in the Texas hill country. Everyone has dogs, for companionship as you walk your property or perhaps to keep the little critters in line. Our dogs pretty regularly took down rabbits, mice, the like. (We even had a dog who liked to warn us when rattle snakes were on the porch, but that was actually a disservice since getting a rattler worked up is rarely good for anyone.) Folks were so used to having dogs around that even if your dog wandered off your property and over to your neighbor’s, they didn’t care. They’d give you a call to let you know your dog was there, or, more likely, they’d just wait for the dog to wander home. The dogs usually do – they know where dinner is.
Given the ubiquity of loose dogs in that rural neighborhood, all the UPS guys carried dog treats with them. There was a routine always followed – UPS truck drove up, dog barked like mad and ran to greet it, UPS guy threw a few treats on the ground before leaving the truck, and while the dog grabbed up the treats and snuffled the ground for more, the UPS guy would sneak the package onto the porch and leap back into the truck. Usually, they were able to just drive away, but on a couple occasions, our dogs tried to go for a ride with them. Scout got her front feet into a truck once, nose reaching for more treats, before Mom got to her to pull her down. The UPS guy was super chill about it – I bet liking dogs is a huge bonus when you drive a UPS delivery truck in the Texas hill country.
So that’s where I grew up. Maybe UPS guys in Madison, Wisconsin also tend to carry dog treats, just in case they come to a house with an invisible fence that will allow a dog to greet them the moment they step over the barrier they can’t see. Or maybe UPS guys in Madison, Wisconsin just like dogs.
I bet you like dogs. I bet you thought my dog was adorable, zigzagging to and fro to catch every smell. I bet you thought he looked friendly and wanted to give him a pet. I bet your assumption was confirmed when you approached him, and he started wiggling so hard his feet actually came off the ground a little.
And maybe it would have come as a surprise to someone else, but it felt completely and totally normal to me for you to offer my dog a treat. In fact, I thought it was sweet. It felt like we’d confirmed the friendship I was already feeling for the UPS guy escorting us along Wolf Street.
“He would love one,” I told you. With a big grin, you jumped into your truck to grab your bag of dog treats. Luckily, Clyde has an iron stomach, so it doesn’t much matter what kind of treats you had. I kept my social distance, but let Clyde rush forward. Like the big baby he is, he jumped up on you in his excitement. But he sat right down after you gave him the first treat, letting you pat his head even while he tried to lick your fingers clean.
A final pat and some tail wagging, and you had to get back to work. With a wave and a smile, Clyde and I continued on our way. You hopped into your truck. We officially parted ways when I turned onto Oakbrook Circle and you continued on N High Point.
But it was nice to have a friend on our walk for a change. Thanks for making it official with a dog treat.
That’s really all I wanted to say.
This is a work of creative non-fiction. It’s based on a real event, real places, and real people, but the recollections of the event, places, and people are my own and do not necessarily reflect how the places or people mentioned would describe themselves. Additionally, I have taken some creative liberties to enhance the storytelling.