Toy Story

Toys have a very short life with Pepper. To be told by Santa that you are destined to be

an indestructible play-bone for my little princess is to be told you are going on death row with a grisly death coming your way quicker than you ever imagined. She has had the toughest of the tough and rendered them to rags spilling their foam guts everywhere in a matter of minutes. Her toy box as of now is a pitiable sight that is the toy equivalent of a battle field hospital tent during the Crimean War. If they could speak we could never sleep for the heart-rending groans of the torn and tattered bodies that gave themselves in service so gallantly. Last week her longest living indestructible squeaking bone gave up the ghost at last. In a frenzy of chewing scratching tearing and stretching the weakened fabric fell like the walls of Jericho. Pepper is never gracious in her victory. Honor would be to allow these victims a quick and merciful consignment to the trash. She is however a dog without honor. She rips out their entrails gleefully and parades their lifeless carcasses around and around like Achilles gloating in the death of Paris. When what is left of the toy is taken from her and placed in the kitchen trash she takes up a position in front of the trash drawer and cries. These are not cries of mourning and regret. They are the cries of an enemy who wants to dig up your grave and build a cage with your bones as Warren Zevon once sang. If re-incarnation is our way of journeying toward the light of spiritual perfection please don’t let me come back as a chew toy for Pepper. That fate is reserved only for the baddest of the bad.