Dog ownership provides many opportunities for meeting people. There are those you meet while out walking the dog, those you meet at the vet, at the groomer’s, at PetSmart. At the bank.

And dogs—especially our dogs—often provide opportunities for meeting neighbors, although in our case, it’s often been to apologize.

We’d only been in our neighborhood a few weeks when Murry sneaked out through a broken storm door. Down the street, a neighbor left her car door open to remove a flat of flowers. She returned to find Murry sitting in the passenger seat, ready to go for a ride.

She obliged, driving him a few laps around our circle before bringing him home.

Our other dog, Chewie, escaped our back yard so many times our attempts to secure the borders has resulted in a creation that appears more fortress than fence. A Sanford & Son Construction Production.

Unattractive though it may be, the fortified fence has prevented any escapes for several months. We became so confident about having sealed the yard that we decided to allow our two rabbits, Winnie and Stew, to roam loose. We didn’t fear the intermingling of our dogs and rabbits as (1) the rabbits are accustomed to, and seemingly fond of, the thorough ear washing service that Murry provides, and (2) the rabbits are smarter than your average turnip. The dogs are not.

The rabbits, accustomed to life with a litter box and pellet-shaped food, were cautious at first about exploring their new boundaries, but soon began frolicking about like Disney bunnies, though they haven’t quite mastered skipping or whistling.

They’re also somewhat deficient with their tunneling skills. While they’ve clearly enjoyed having an opportunity to dig, their exit holes are generally located anywhere from three to seven inches from the entrance. These aren’t little rabbits.

Still, the pair has seemed extremely happy in their new, larger quarters, so we were surprised when a neighbor rang our bell recently to ask if we were missing a rabbit.

Hard as it was to believe that I’d lost my hare and hadn’t noticed, I checked and—sure enough—Stew was gone. She’d slipped under the gate and been traveling yard to yard, friendly enough to entice several very nice neighbors (some of whom we hadn’t previously met through Chewie’s escapes) into attempting to catch her. Though Stew likes being held, she doesn’t like being picked up, so she’s skilled at evasion.

Which is how we came to be walking about our neighborhood, asking people if they’d seen our rabbit, Stew. In the process, my daughter got a pet-sitting job and I got a start from a plant and the name of a person to cut down a tree. We eventually found Stew stretched out under the front porch of neighbors Vicki and Ritchie Robb, but discovered that convincing Stew to come out wasn’t simple. We could lure her to the edge with a PopTart, but she’d snatch it from our hand and scoot back to the middle.

What we needed was a hare net.

Since none was handy, we used a garden hose instead. Hare spray.

Yes, we wet our hare.

Stew generally doesn’t mind getting moist, so it took some time for her to get disgruntled enough to come out. She wasn’t
happy. You might even say she was a hot cross bunny.

Just when I thought my bad hare day was ending, it only got worse.

The day’s events inspired Geoff to break into song, his own rendition of that Patsy Cline classic.

“I go out walkin’ after midnight, out in the moonlight, just like we used to do.

“I’m always walkin’ after midnight, searchin’ for Stew.”

 

Some tastes I’ve had to work to acquire.

A taste for coffee was one. Although my nose would feel seduced by the smell of brewing coffee, it wasn’t until I began adding much cream and sweetener that I developed a taste.

National Public Radio was another. Before meeting my husband, the only times I listened to NPR were by accident, and I never stayed long enough to give it a chance. Then Geoff introduced me to a few of his favorite shows, which soon became mine, which evolved into my saving sock-sorting and such for when those shows aired.

And, much as I love this state and its people, there was a time when I would cringe at the word Appalachian, feeling it meant spit and whittle, and held negative, back-woods implications. But then I was part of something amazing—something so thoroughly Appalachian that no other word but that could describe what it was.

Except maybe enchanted.

It was the last night of the WV Writers Conference at Cedar Lakes in Ripley. The banquet and awards ceremony had ended, and most folks had moved into the assembly hall for the evening’s entertainment.  First was a reading by Lee Maynard (one of my favorite authors ever) accompanied by acoustic blues-man Pops Walker. Next up were Americana musicians Doug and Telisha Williams, who hail from southwestern Virginia (which sounds close enough to being south West Virginia that I think we should claim them).

They performed their own songs, and there was this one–brand new–they’d never performed in public before. Telisha admitted to being nervous about putting it out there, but to an audience of writers, familiar with the exposed feeling that comes with sharing something they’d written, nothing could’ve endeared her to us more.

That song, “I Want to Be Gone,” was hands-down one of the best I’ve ever heard in my life, and her singing of it couldn’t have been any more perfect. It’s what a voice like hers is meant for, and the crowd went wild.

As good as the performances were, the magical part of the night didn’t begin until the official entertainment was over. Many went back to their rooms to change while the campfire was being lit, and though I started to head for the campfire, Lee Maynard invited me to join him and Pops Walker on the back porch of the lodge, and  I couldn’t resist.

Someone grabbed Telisha and Doug Williams on their way to change and asked them to join us. Pops convinced them to bring their instruments, since he had brought his.

A few other conference goers wandered in, and soon, Pops and the Williams were playing for us, with Telisha accepting a request to sing a Patsy Cline song, which she nailed in a way I’d have sworn only Cline herself could’ve done.

But our musical guests weren’t content with being the only entertainment, and they convinced others gathered around to share their talents.

Granny Sue (Susanna Holstein) sang an old mountain ballad that sent chills down my spine in a voice that was meant to be heard on a West Virginia porch lit by the shine of the moon.

There was more music, then Kirk Judd recited one of his poems, “My people was music,” with impromptu sound effects provided by a muffler-less truck and a bob white with impeccable timing. More music, then author Jim Minnick read from his memoir about hardscrabble life on a blueberry farm. More music, then Bluefield College professor Rob Merritt read a poem about Patsy Cline and what the land can do to a person.

A man, Ben LeRoy, had been sitting on the wall not far behind me had never been to West Virginia before. He’d made the most of his time in the state—had visited the Greenbrier, done a good bit of sightseeing on his way to our conference. Even managed to sip his first ‘shine with the Wild & Wonderful Whites, including Jesco himself. All that evening, he kept pulling out his camera to film bits of the various performances. He was so thoroughly enthralled with the talent.

“This is the Appalachia I’d always heard about,” he said at one point.

Strange how sometimes a person needs someone else’s eyes to see more clearly through their own.

To be Appalachian is high praise. It represents a connection between an area and a mindset and a way of living. It proudly carries its ties to the past, talks with a twang, appreciates sunsets and wildlife and all things that grow.

It’s low maintenance.

Not fancy.

And a taste I shouldn’t have waited so long to acquire.

My husband was not yet a year old when his dad went to prison.

Geoff and his father are close. He looks up to his pop. Admires him openly.

One of the things he most admires was his dad’s willingness to go to prison for something he believed in.

Last month, Geoff and his father, Winston Fuller, traveled to Parchman Prison in Mississippi, where—50 years ago—Winston was jailed for a little less than three weeks.

Winston was one of the Freedom Riders, a large, multi-racial group of men and women from all over the country who organized to board interstate buses in an effort to expose the segregation that continued in the South despite a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed separate bathrooms and waiting rooms for blacks and whites. Winston and his son went to Mississippi for a reunion of the Freedom Riders.

Geoff and his dad were gone almost a week, and when Geoff returned, he could talk of little else for days but the people they met, the places they visited, and his admiration for those who so completely believed in their cause that they’d risk their life to defend it.

Shortly before Geoff and his dad went on their trip, we watched a DVD about a Los Angeles group of Freedom Riders (clips from an old newscast called City at Night) that included an interview with a young Winston. It had been filmed right before he was to travel to the area where one busload of Freedom Riders had been ambushed and beaten, and another bus had been firebombed. The interviewer asked if he was afraid.

“Yes, I’m afraid,” Winston said. “But I’m still going to go.”

He said he was holding onto the conviction that something had to be done, and they couldn’t hope someone else was going to do it.

“This is the only way you can beat them,” Winston said of the peaceful protest, where the strategy was to fill up the jail with those willing to allow themselves to be incarcerated for as long as it took for something to change.

When asked how he felt about the possibility of going to prison when he had such a young son, Winston answered, “I think it would lend some conviction to the moral training I hope to give my son.”

Geoff and his dad laugh over that line now, find funny the innocence of the 24-year-old man and his idealistic, and somewhat simplistic, view of fatherhood. He had no idea it would take right about 50 years before his son would grasp and appreciate the risk Dad was willing to take to help make this world a more fair and righteous place for his child—and for other children as well.

Sometimes, we aren’t ready for the lesson at the same pace as our teacher.

Author Clarence Budington Kelland once wrote of his father, “He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”

Like my husband, I was blessed with a dad I’ve always looked up to, one I appreciate in a whole new way as the years go by.

Dad could do anything, build anything, fix anything. He was good at all sports, able to pick up and play most any instrument. Whether he could actually do all the things I thought he could, I’m not sure. The thing is, I always believed that he could.

It was fun being Superman’s child.

My dad was just 18 years old when he came to the U.S. from India. He had no family here. He simply knew in his gut that he was meant to be an American. He enlisted with the military. Became a paratrooper. (Who but Superman would jump from a perfectly good airplane?)

The courage it took for Dad to travel from India to the United States, all alone—and jump from planes once he was here—is hard for me to fathom. As is getting on a bus, as my father-in-law did, knowing it could mean being beaten or killed, knowing you’d be going to prison.

I wonder what my life could be like if I could emulate the fearlessness of our fathers, if I could stop being so careful and conservative and take a chance every now and again.

I so admire their courage. So admire the men.

And I’m grateful they’re mine.

Happy Father’s Day.

From the time I said yes to my daughter’s question on Friday evening to right about dark Monday night, I must’ve questioned my sanity a few dozen times.

She’s a sly one, that girl of mine. Timed things just right.

She knew I’d just finished cleaning out a little storage building we have in our yard, knew that while I’d put much in the trash, some heavier things had been dragged to a nearby spot in our yard.

Classier folk have a chiminea or an outside fireplace or a stone firepit, and while burn barrels don’t hold the same status, they do have a bit of hobo-esque charm. In Fullerville, ours is called That Place Where The Grass Won’t Grow.

And That Place was rather heavily populated when Celeste asked if, when we burned it, she could throw her school papers from the past year in the fire. She added some bit about what a perfect way it would be to finish off the school year and celebrate the end of middle school.

“What a cool idea,” I said. “Sure.”

“Can I maybe invite Katie and Melon over to burn their stuff, too?” she asked.

“Don’t see why not,” I said.

Suave negotiator that she is, she allowed that to settle a day or two before telling me how excited her friends were about the idea.

“We should make it a tradition,” she said.

I’m a big fan of traditions. This, my wily girl knows. I was putty in her frighteningly capable hands.

Putty she manipulated into agreeing to allow her to invite more than a dozen friends into our back yard Monday night, the last day of school in Kanawha County, for a homework-fed bonfire.

If, perhaps, you’re in that same happy place I must’ve been in when I said yes, allow me to highlight the two components that had me questioning my sanity all weekend.

Teenagers.

Fire.

My catastrophizing skills are well-honed, so I spent the next few days entertaining a variety of potential scenarios. Marshmallows toasting on sticks would lead to an Olympic torch run re-enactment that ignited the many trees in our yard; a sudden wind gust would send burning homework papers onto neighboring rooftops; a sudden torrential downpour would trap the hoard of teenagers inside our house.

Come Sunday night—the night before—I was so anxious I barely slept.

All for naught.

Although stifling, the weather was perfect. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze. Not a single raindrop. And no flaming torch runs.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined an evening so perfect. Nearly all the homework-burners arrived within minutes of each other, instead of stretched over hours, as often happens. The fire lit easily, burned evenly, and remained under control while they—of their own accord—turns manning the hose to keep it that way. Hot marshmallows were smashed between chocolate and graham crackers. Food wrappers and empty pop cans all went into the trashcan. And best of all was their somewhat ceremonial burning of homework.

It’s something I genuinely hope will become a tradition.

One we’d be happy to host.

When someone admits to me that they like to write, they often do so in this secretive, almost embarrassed way, like they’re ashamed or anticipating ridicule.

It seems like eons ago, but I was once the same way. I was a closet writer, afraid those I worked with would find it amusing or—even worse—adorable that I was trying to write. It was my secret for years, yet I wanted it badly enough that I didn’t stop with merely dreaming. I read books about writing, subscribed to writing-related magazines, took workshops, attended conferences. I invested in myself—something I don’t often or easily do.

One of the best of my early investments was to attend the annual West Virginia Writers Conference at Cedar Lakes in Ripley. The first year I went, I only knew one person there and clung a bit desperately to her that first day.

But I quickly discovered there’s a funny thing about writers conferences–the people who attend them like to write. And as a general rule, they also tend to read. No interrogation is necessary to discover such things. If they’re wearing a name badge, it’s pretty much a given, so making conversation couldn’t be simpler.

So what do you like to write?

Who’s your favorite author?

What workshops are you taking?

It might seem that in a business as competitive as publishing can be, one would encounter nothing but backstabbing cutthroats, but that’s not once been the case. Instead, those I’ve met during my years attending the annual conference have been quick to share their wisdom and resources and advice. The business of writing can be lonely, but conferences provide a sense of community and connection I’ve not found anywhere else.

This year’s conference starts Friday, June 10, and lasts until Sunday. Can’t stay the whole time? Single-day pricing is available. For those anxious about jumping in with both feet, it’s a gentle way to get your toes wet.

One of my writing heroes, Erma Bombeck, understood how frightening it can be to take the first steps toward pursuing a dream.

“There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they’re still there.

“It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good or how bad am I?’ That’s where courage comes in. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”

While I agree with Bombeck, I believe it takes more than just courage. It takes a determination to invest in yourself, to make up your mind that this is what you want, and recognize there are things you must learn in order to achieve it.  You need to put yourself in the places writers go so you can learn from them, so you can network and schmooze to make the best connections, and so you can experience what it’s like to be around others with the same compulsion for stories.

Bombeck had another quote that’s long been in my Top Ten.

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’.”

That’s what I want. To have nothing left.

It doesn’t help to know there are likely some smart alecks around who are thinking that if that was the case, I could’ve died long ago.

For more information about the West Virginia Writers Conference, visit http://www.wvwriters.org/conference.html.

While cleaning my inbox, I found an old email from one of my favorite people ever, telling about her brother and his colorful (now ex) wife.

“True story,” she wrote. “You know you’re a red neck when your wife is standing on the porch buck naked, and you use an industrial paint sprayer to spray-tan her, then dry her off with a leaf blower! She looked like an Oompa Loompa.”

It seems appropriate that the email would resurface just now, since my husband was noting that we’ve once again entered the season of Things That Are Orange, But Shouldn’t Be.

Although the concept that fair-skin-is-beautiful has been marketed to the masses for a good many years, most still seem to view porcelain skin (also known as “winter pallor”) as sickly looking or dated, calling to mind a time when corseted women sat beneath lace-trimmed umbrellas, fanning themselves daintily and swooning if the sun’s rays made contact.

There’s something about having a tan that can make a person feel slimmer, healthier, prettier. More confident. A good tan can camouflage spider veins and allow age spots to disguise themselves as freckles. And maybe best of all, a good tan convinces people that you spend more time outdoors than you actually do, which somehow seems virtuous.

Artificial tanning products have come a long way from Coppertone’s Q-T (for Quick Tan) back in the 1970s. The original Q-T formula needed a good bit of time to work its magic. Once applied, it took hours for the person to realize they were turning a freakish shade of orange. Today’s products have improved to the point where orangeness can be achieved almost instantaneously.

The thing that manages to sucker me in is when I see celebrities showing off artificial tans that look incredibly good. For every Oompa Loompa, there seems to be a beautifully bronzed swimsuit model who claims she hasn’t set foot in the sun since she was still wearing Swimmies.

I’ve had just enough success as a do-it-yourselfer that, every now and again, I’ll become convinced that I’m capable of applying self-tanning lotion in a thorough and careful enough fashion that I’ll end up looking as though I’ve been kissed by the sun.

My last kiss was a sloppy one.

Seems ironic that those of us chasing the sun-kissed look end up being orange.

(That sentence above seems more clever if you read “sun-kissed” as a brand name for citrus.)

The last time I tried, the palms of my hands ended up stained to look like monkey paws. My elbows and knees appeared to have been soaked in rusty water–water that apparently dripped down my ankles and wrists.

And then there were the sheets on our bed.

When I arose the morning after, I saw I’d created a Shroud of Turin effect.

It’s now been a few years since that last self-tanning attempt, and I’ve been reading about improvements made to the lotions that enable a near flawless application. Or so the commercials say.

I haven’t yet taken the bait, but I’m tempted.

If the next time you see me, I look like I’ve rolled in Doritos, you’ll know it didn’t go well.

It was reminiscent of a scene from The Godfather. Except instead of Italian, think Polish. And our Don Corleone was female.

And if any of us had made a move to kiss her ring, she’d likely have suggested an alternative target.

When my Aunt Wilma makes a trip back east from California for a visit, the homage begins. Her nieces and nephews—nearly all of whom have stayed with her at one time or another—travel long distances to pay their respects.

Like so many families, ours is spread coast to coast. Aside from weddings and funerals, we seldom manage to gather. Organizing a get-together that works with our schedules and distances is an enormous logistical undertaking.

Yet several of us cousins somehow managed to gather last weekend to take advantage Aunt Wilma being in Pittsburgh.

I think maybe it was the slapped-togetherness of the weekend that made it work so well. There were no fancy clothes to pack, no uncomfortable shoes. No need to cook something to bring with that would impress.

We alternated between hanging out at my cousin Dale Rae’s apartment—Aunt Wilma’s headquarters—and my Aunt JoAnne’s, where cousins Erik (from Florida) and Wendy (from Texas) and their people had crashed.

There was much eating and talking, a trip to Kennywood Park. We grazed through leftovers as we stayed up late and talked more. Far too soon, it was time to head home.

To some, it might sound uneventful or simplistic or lacking in color, but it was one of the best weekends I’ve had in ages.

When you live far from family, it’s easy to forget the feeling of connection that comes from spending time with those who swim in your gene pool, along with the ones that they love. The ones who swim by default.

If we’re lucky, being around them can take us back to times and events in our lives that abide revisiting, regardless of whether those times were as disconcerting as being stuck on a Ferris wheel together or as trivial as making potions from bathroom cabinet ingredients or as stupid as things caused by double-dog-dares.

“When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman,” Jack Handey once wrote. “After school we’d all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn’t until later that I found out Uncle Caveman was a bear.”

(Jack Handey isn’t kin, but he’d fit in with us well.)

These relatives I hung out with last weekend—they’re my people . They belong to me in a way I’m only now starting to appreciate. In them, I not only remember the past, but get to peek into the future. We share the same people. Miss the same people.

If our Papap hadn’t been able to convince the cute, yoyo-slinging redhead to go out with him all those years ago, none of us would exist.

The group of us hanging out last weekend were so diverse that, had life not forced the acquaintance, I doubt we’d ever have met. That’s the cool thing about families. You don’t have much say in what you get, and you have to be smart to recognize the value, especially if some have beliefs that vary from yours. Family members provide opportunities to open your eyes to things you might not otherwise get to see.

I saw much this past weekend. Learned much.

And I want even more.

There’s a quote by George Bernard Shaw that nicely sums up what I’m coming to see as our theme.

“If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton–let’s make it dance.”

Geoff and I had been married barely a week when he realized his platinum wedding band was missing. We’d known it didn’t fit as tight as it should, but thought it was snug enough–and heavy enough–that he’d notice if it slipped off.

It did. And he didn’t.

Ring No. 2–white gold from a pawn shop–fit far more snugly. Once Geoff struggled it over his knuckle, that ring didn’t budge. Some time (and perhaps a few pounds) later, the ring began to strangle his finger. He greased and wiggled it off.

Then promptly lost it.

Ring No. 3—stainless steel, from an upscale gumball machine—lasted the longest. (Though it’s generally believed that quality lasts, I think ugly lasts longer. Buy something that’s unattractive, but reasonably priced—it lasts for years. Indulge in nice earrings, they’re lost in a week.)

“If I manage to lose this ring,” Geoff said of this last, “Then I’m just going to get a ring tattooed on my finger.”

And, yeah. He’s now soliciting recommendations for a tattoo artist.

While not passionately opposed to tattoos, I’m also not a huge fan. I’ve seen how the effects of pregnancy can alter a once-cute linked, double heart into something that resembles the footprints of an oversized duck. What seems like a good idea at 20 is almost never what a 40-year-old would select.

Rather than being a display of a person’s individuality and their idea of what qualifies as art, tattoos seem to cause the person to be stuck at the age they were when they got it. There was a time when mullets were all the rage. I think of tattoos as having a permanent mullet.

I’ve heard some reputable tattoo artists will try to discourage people from having a name inked to their skin, but the heat of passion can make them hard to discourage.

There are websites devoted to the creativeness some have employed to disguise or cover tattoos. Oddee.com has pictures of one man who had the name Tracy etched into the skin right over his heart. After they broke up, he had a second tattoo put on—large red letters spelling out VOID.

Actor Johnny Depp once had “Winona Forever” tattooed on his arm, but after they broke up, had the “na” removed so it now reads, “Wino Forever.”

Aaron Evans of Bristol, London, must’ve thought he’d be safe getting a neck tattoo of his own name, rather than a girlfriend’s. As if his name wasn’t enough, he had his birth date added beneath it. Both were clearly visible on the video the security camera recorded of him breaking into a car.

While surfing the internet looking at funny tattoos, I ran across a blog called Buried with Children, written by a nurse who works in adult critical care. She wrote about going into a patient’s room with another nurse named Judy to give the patient a bath. The patient, a woman, had a tattoo on her stomach that said, “Frank’s,” along with an arrow that pointed downward.

The nurses completed their task without comment, then set the patient up for breakfast when a man walked in who the patient said was her husband.

“Oh, hi,” said Judy. “You must be Frank.”

The man looked confused and then said, “No. My name is Jimmy.”

I imagine that patient regretted ever getting the Frank tattoo.

But didn’t regret it as much as that nurse.

If a woman said she received a lawn mower as a gift and it made her cry, most people would assume the tears were because she felt it was impersonal or she loathed practical gifts.

The thing is, this particular woman (me) happens to love practical gifts, and she knew the people who gave it (my parents) did so out of a simple desire to help.

The baffling part was my tears. Especially since I could’ve sworn I’d installed waterproof seals on my tear ducts.

I mean, I could understand a new mower bringing tears (of relief) to that poor realtor trying to sell the house next door to our overgrown corner lot. But I couldn’t figure out what it was about the gift that made my throat tighten, time and again.

It didn’t make sense until I was driving home from work, alone in my car, half-listening to a talk radio conversation about Mother’s Day between two or three men. None of the men still had a mom, and when one man referred to himself as an orphan, it clicked. I understood the reason for my lawnmower tears.

Not long after Papap Frankwich—my Mom’s dad—died back in 1990, I remember walking into my parent’s kitchen and finding Mom staring at her telephone, deep in thought. She and Papap used to talk on the phone all the time, with him starting most every call by rattling off something in Polish, his gunshot at the start of the race–“And we’re off!”

That day, I remember Mom looking up at me and saying, “I’m an orphan.”

What occurred so suddenly to her that day clicked differently for me as I drove in my car. For her it was the realization that, regardless of her age, she was an orphan. For me, it was that, regardless of my age, I was still someone’s child.

My parents knew I’d been down, that my run of bad luck had been going on so long it qualified as a marathon. They knew I had trouble asking for help. That I wouldn’t ask. That even if they offered, I might not accept.

So they did the only thing they could think of–they chose a problem and solved it for me.

We needed a mower. They got us a mower.

Because I have a daughter of my own, I recognize how difficult it can be to watch her struggle with something painful, or even mildly uncomfortable. There’s this impulse, as a parent, to want to take it from her, to endure those bad things on her behalf so she’s spared.

For the past 13 years, I’ve been so caught up on the parenting side of that equation that I’ve forgotten how wonderful it can be on the child half. To be on the side that’s loved so much someone feels a desperation to take the bad things away. Even if the bad thing is nothing more than replacing a mower their child managed to burn to a crisp.

It doesn’t matter that the kid has more gray hair than her mom.

Or that her joints crack and pop as loud as her dad’s.

They did it because they wanted to take care of their kid.

I’m still their kid.

And I’m grateful beyond words that I am.

I’ve found some cool things on Craigslist before, but this latest has had me laughing for hours. And it didn’t cost me a cent.

Since we’ve been in the market for a used lawn mower, I went online to craigslist and clicked on the heading for “farm+garden.”

And there it was. A personal ad for a pig.

“Big Beautiful Hereford Sow seeks Boar of same interests.”

According to the ad, Belle is a one-year-old hog who enjoys long walks in the pasture, eating roots, chasing chickens, and rolling in mud. She’s on the lookout for a meaningless overnight relationship with a true boar.

Her place.

She’s even offering dinner and drinks.

Her only request from prospective suitors was for a “photo, please.”

Belle might be easy, but the girl still has some standards.

Photos show she’s a beauty. Red hair. Blue eyes. True, she has a bit of a pudge, but at last she’s honest about it. Admits right there in print that she might be “a bit larger than the picture shows.”

Before I’d even finished reading the ad, my mind was already building a list of potential pig puns, should I be able to persuade Belle’s owners to let me insinuate myself into the romantic endeavors. This was so totally my kind of story. I was on it like a pig on lipstick.

Belle lives just outside of Charleston with the Figgatts (and a multitude of critters). I wasn’t but few words into talking with Aimee when I realized I’d stumbled on a gold mine.

Aimee is hilarious. Her ways with a phrase had me rolling, and she did so effortlessly. I mean—she described her hog as “having flair.” While there may rightly be a good number of pigs blessed with flair, I doubt there are many people capable of recognizing or appreciating such things.                 

Belle’s desperation for finding love likely intensified after some recent drama at the Figgatt Farm. Flower, one of the family’s potbelly pigs, gave birth to seven piglets even though the only boar on the farm, Henry (of local Kiss A Pig fame), had been neutered.

Although Henry and Flower had been pen-mates and inseparable friends, and Henry was terribly proud of those piglets, he lacked the essential elements necessary for fatherhood. Aimee was baffled over who might’ve deflowered her Flower, but eventually learned the pig had been “exposed” to a male not long before coming to live on their farm.

“Henry was devastated when he learned the piglets weren’t his,” said Aimee. “But the couple is working on their relationship. Henry loves the piglets as his own, and seems willing to help raise them.”

Watching the couple and the little ones must’ve been painful for Belle, who became so desperate she tried to woo Henry away, in spite of their 350-ish pound weight difference.

When that didn’t work, she aggressively flirted with a rooster and tried to accost a neighboring farmer.

(Does anyone out there appreciate how difficult it is not to succumb to the lure of a line about a pig and a poke?)

The original plans for Belle were vastly different from what they’ve become, but the pig’s charms have won her a place on the farm, as a pet, from here out.

“I received a few emails immediately from the ad,” said Aimee. “One from a woman offering her husband, who she claimed was a pig.”

While telling a friend about the romance-seeking pig, she suggested it would make good show material for Jerry Sprenger.

Seems to me it might better suit HBO.

They could call it, “Pig Love.”

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To see photos and read more about the Figgatt farm, log into Facebook and then like, “Little Patch on the Lane.”