1 post tagged “adventure”
Sassy’s World
Alrighty there then,
We have this purebred, old maid, 70 plus year old in human years, bossy, opinionated, and telepathic (something she picked up in the Far East), Yorkie. Anyway, Sassy talks to me. She doesn’t talk to anyone else. Whether this is because of some slight rendered by some poor soul, or just because I so easily bow to her demands is not known by me. Maybe she talks to me because I actually have little of value to say anyway, and am more than willing to write down what she has to say. Do I talk to her? Of course I do. You wouldn’t want me to be rude, would you?
Sassy describes herself as a “puppy person” or “puppy people”, men, women, and children as “human puppies”, cats as “kitty people” cows “dinner”. That’s her little joke. A cow is actually “Cow people”, and so on right down the species chain. Sassy’s ancestors are from Yorkshire, in the North of England where they were “of the noble classes” and owned vast tracts of land. Being enlightened, they did not believe in serfdom and employed several score puppy people to work the land and turn a profit almost a hundred years before the Magna Carta was written. You should know at this point that, while other puppy people count their age in terms of seven puppy years for every human puppy year, Sassy’s family was blessed with a longevity gene that causes them to age in a time span equal to human puppies, resulting in Sassy and myself being of the same age. I won’t mention Sassy’s age as she is a woman. However, my age is 61.
Yes, Sassy’s ancestors were quite wealthy. So much so that they would have embarrassed the King, had he known. Almost all of their vast wealth came to them as plunder from the Crusades. Sassy couldn't care less about the rightness or wrongness of this. “What’s done’s done” she always says.
Now, as you know, Yorkies once believed it was perfectly fine to have many husbands or wives. That being the case the Yorkie family grew by leaps and bounds to such proportions that the head of the family decided that she had had enough of trying to control so many Yorkies. His decision was based not on their being a troublesome group, although they were, but rather on the heavy responsibility she (Yorkie families are matriarchal) carried on her shoulders. Let’s face it; it’s not easy making decisions for one Yorkie, much less many. So each member of her Yorkie family received a generous amount of gold sovereigns, in the neighborhood of 15,000,000 dollars in today’s United States currency, and was cut loose to follow their destinies, never more to request assistance from the matriarch.
Sassy’s great, great, great, great (so far back you can’t imagine in puppy people generations) grandmother decided that she would leave the green (albeit wet) fields of England and travel across the vast ocean to America where her shrewd support of the Colonies during the American Revolution resulted in her being rewarded with 100 square miles of virgin land in what is now Pennsylvania.
All went well with Sassy’s family. Their hard work, or rather the hard work of their employees, contributed to increasing their fortune five fold. Unfortunately, all things must end eventually, and Sassy’s family lost almost everything in the stock market crash of the 1920’s. At most, there might have been a couple of million dollars left when the market recovered, if that.
During the great wars of the Twentieth Century, all of Sassy’s family except her enlisted in the Army and died fighting in many dangerous missions. Sassy tried to enlist, but was just too young. Because of the deaths of her family, Sassy inherited the family fortune.
Sassy, being of age, but still young and naive, was quite lonely after the deaths of her family. Shortly after inheriting her family’s wealth Sassy fell in love with a handsome German Pincher named Rudolph. Rudolph had come to the United States after World War II looking to rebuild his family fortune, lost during the war. In short, Rudolph was a gold-digger.
Sassy and Rudolph were soon married and Sassy turned management of her fortune (keep in mind that two million dollars, just after World War II, was worth considerably more. Consider that a new automobile could be had for as little as 500 dollars.
The happy couple embarked on a round the world trip with lengthy stops in various countries where Rudolph sampled the nightlife and wild women at each stop. Sassy, being more interested in improving herself, occupied her time developing an appreciation of art, both fine and not so. She studied theater in England, art and Italy, sausage making in Germany, Karate, Aikido, and Ninjutsu in Japan, Shaolin Kung Fu in China. She learned to drive cars blindfolded, or she could have, had she been that stupid; she wasn’t. In France she became a master bake chef. “You know” she explained to me “in case there should be another wheat shortage”. She learned survival skills in the United States and was a master marksman. Interestingly, she never learned to fly because “I don’t have wings so I’m not intended to fly”. She said she did not want to pilot an airplane because “I want to be close to the ground in case I should fall”.
Rudolph did not have good money management skills, and within 10 years Sassy’s fortune was almost. Of course, Sassy did not know this, so Rudolph thought. Rudolph’s plan was to spend every last penny and then find another trusting puppy person whose money he would gladly spend. However, a former friend of Rudolph became upset over Rudolph’s inability to repay a personal loan and reported Rudolph’s mismanagement to Sassy. Sassy confronted Rudolph “I will make you pay, not only for foolishly spending my fortune” she wept. Rudolph passed away suddenly in a violent death, a gunshot in the back of the head. Interpol became involved, was suspicious of Sassy but never solved the case which remains open to this day. Was it Rudolph’s ex-friend? Was It Sassy? Was it someone else from Rudolph’s past? Who knows who the shooter was? Only the killer knows.
Overnight, Sassy became a pariah to the international society set. This broke Sassy’s heart and she disappeared from sight. Where did she go? No one had a clue, and frankly no one cared. Such is the fickleness of friendship.
Sassy became obsessed with regaining her fortune, but more than that she was adamant that she would gain revenge on those who had turned their back on her in her time of need. She decided she would take from them that which she needed to enable her to live in her luxury. It was then that Sassy’s many years of studying and training paid off. Sassy, became a cat burglar. No pun intended. It took several years, but she regained the wealth she had lost
Sassy lived a simple life for several years going from here to there. She had many adventures during this period of her life, helping those in true need. But she was tired and did not want to travel anymore. She was still wealthy, but had long ago forsaken the trappings of wealth. She thought it best to save her wealth for a rainy day. Yes, Sassy is big on saving and so she kept most of her money in convertible U.S Treasury Bonds.
Sassy was still trying to rebuild the family wealth and knew full well that a penny spent is a penny gone forever. So she had a dilemma. How could she settle down and not have a job to support herself without dipping into her savings, which had grown considerably, thanks to compounded interest, but was still far short of what it had been prior to the disastrous 1920’s. A sudden flash of genius; the thought came to her that many puppy people seemed to live good lives after choosing a human puppy who would cater to their every need. And, a human puppy of her own would be a worthy interface between herself and her lawyers and doctors, as well as seeing to it that her fleet of limousines, airplanes, and yachts well kept maintained and ready to use at a moments notice. She knew full well that there would come times during which she would have to travel. All right, all ready, so Sassy had not completely given up the trappings of the wealthy. This is because she knew well that the appearance of wealth opens more doors, she might someday be required to enter, than does the presumption of poverty.
And so Sassy set out to find a human puppy with which to live that would be completely malleable to her will; and so I have been, as attested to by her dalliance at my home these past years. Sassy’s process of elimination, I do not know. She merely showed up on my doorstep one day and advised me that she was moving in. Did I put up an argument? I have no recollection of doing so. All I know is that the next few days passed in a blur while Sassy, I suppose, acclimated me to her requirements.
Sassy says she has a lot of things on her mind that she is willing to share with her species and others. That’s why I’m writing this. Although she speaks English, and every other known language, she prefers converses with only one, her “human puppy”; at least no one else has ever claimed to have had a conversation with her.
The rest of this story concerns itself with Sassy’s thoughts on many different subjects. It also is a record of the happenings in her life both before, and after, coming to reside with me. We have had many interesting conversations, most of which were one sided as I listened much more than spoke. Keep in mind that Sassy has lived a long life with many ups and downs, and along the way she has gained great wisdom. On the other hand, I, myself possess no wisdom of which anyone might be interested in hearing about. I still plod along wondering about such things as does it make any difference in the scheme on the cosmos whether I put my left shoe on before the right one.
That, friends, is how I met Sassy.
To be continued
