Funny thing happened on the way to the golf course. Okay, on the way to the kitchen.

I’m minding my own business, getting ready for golf, drinking coffee, the typical routine…

When I’m not playing golf, my summer footwear is mostly snappers – you may know them as flip flops – so when I play golf I have to bring socks to put on when I change into my golf shoes at the course.  I normally grab some when I’m getting dressed in the closet and put them on the table by the front door. Did that as usual. Check.

The routine on any morning involves a nice walk with Vito. Check. (I missed a step here, a crucial step. But I’ll get to that in a minute.)

As I’m getting ready to leave, I’m on my way to the kitchen to grab the lid for my coffee cup and get a treat for Vito and … whooooooosh… my snapper slides across the floor, I slip and swear and wobble and catch my balance as, seemingly in slow motion, a tsunami of coffee goes flying from my mug.

It’s not until I’m on my hands and knees cleaning up the mess that I discover the culprit. The offending “object” that caused me to slip. When I saw it, I busted out laughing. Have you ever seen the movie Turner and Hooch? Well, there, lying on the tile, was a gigantic shoestring piece of slobber. Not mine. And Vito is my only roommate. Here’s where that crucial step in Vito’s walk I mentioned comes in. Vito is a big dog. With big jowls. Some levels of activity or excitement when we walk cause him to drool more than others. When I see he’s had one of those walks, I tickle his ear while we’re still outside so he shakes his head and tosses those goobers to nature. Either way, when we get inside, he goes to get a drink and I wipe his mouth with a jowl towel. Obviously, I missed the tickle step and he dropped his load in a dangerous spot before we reached his bowl.

It may have been my responsibility to get him to shake it off, but he should have had the courtesy to drop that honker in a low traffic area, or at least warn me about it. My routine was disrupted, then I was scrambling to not be late and forgot my socks. Thanks a lot, Vito.

Although, as my friend Ron said when I told him the story on the golf course, that would have been a funny coroner’s report. True. I didn’t split my head open. I like to imagine that my recovery was a lot more graceful and slo-mo matrixy than the panicky spazz it probably really was. Ultimately, the whole thing makes me giggle. And I got a new, comfy pair of Footjoy socks at the pro shop out of the deal.

Did I really just blog about dog slobber?

Goober Bliss

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