love makes the world go round » True Life Story

Ben the dog who saved the World

mayem — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:41:34 +0000

There were only two important things in Ben’s life, one was eating and the other sleeping. In his youth he had done everything expected of him. He diligently chased old men on bicycles, he’d embarrassed his owner by mating in the street and he’d christened every carpet his patient long suffering master had purchased.
Now the time for chasing nubile young bitches had passed. Now old men could cycle past in complete safety. Now the only thing of interest in the street was the occasional lamppost.
However Ben did have one thing of great interest outside the house. One night as he lay on the grass he happened to look up he’d noticed the large white ball in the sky. He’d seen it before but never had it seemed so beautiful. All at once he felt the urge to tell everyone of its beauty, so he opened his mouth and sang to it. Ben was proud of his singing voice, it was deep full throated and once he started to sing it was almost impossible to stop him. So he sang or at least that’s what he thought he was doing.
From the inside of the house came a voice of concern.
“For Christ’ sake what’s wrong with that dog. Has it been run over? It’s making an awful racket!!”
A nasty impatient voice replied,” Darn the dog it’s my turn and I’m buying Fleet Street.”
Ben took no notice of the silly conversations of humans. Everybody knew the hairless apes were only there to serve dog-kind!
Any dog who took them seriously should be slung wholesale out of the kennel club and his doggy chews snapped before him.
Importantly he carried on with his musical appreciation of the moon one dog eared ear upright in salute to the celestial body whilst the other rested against the side of his head awaiting its turn.
Ben realised just what a fine voice he had, he tried for a yet higher note, but years of barking at the postman had taken its tole. He tried and failed miserably to overcome that greatest of vocal targets a doggy top “C” what had started as his most glorious song a really good howl culminated in a miserable flat yelp not worthy of the mangiest alley dog.
“ For heavens sake get off your backside and go and see to him man!” Came the demanding voice of his mistress.
“Oh yes”, came the suspicious response, “do you think I was born yesterday. I’ll go out and when I return there’ll be a hotel on Mayfair. You go out and get the bloody dogl.”
“Hell will freeze over before I do!” came the assertive reply, “for ten rotten years, you’ve told me what to do! Now you can get off your fat ass and fetch the dog in.”
“He’s your bloody dog you get him, I wanted the stacking system not a damn dog remember?” retorted his master.
“You are the pits, we bought him because of the burglaries, what were we supposed to do, put a sign on the gate beware of the stereo system!”
On and on they went, neither relenting the Monopoly game bought on a forgotten trip to London forgotten as the eternal war between male and female arose to a cacophony of smashing china and really bad language.
The old dog sniffed the air he had become bored with listening to the stupid pointless creatures, they would be asleep in each others arms soon they did this courting ritual every night. He sighed and decided to take a walk.
Unknown to Ben and the rest of the population of planet earth, strange things were happening in deep space.
In an oddly shaped vessel orbiting the planet Jupiter two celestial beings were discussing a subject of momentous importance.
For the benefit of those of you who don’t speak Alpha Centurion I will offer a brief translation.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow, then. Not the destruction of another hostile species I hope that’ll be five this century if it is!”
The other celestial being peered at his partner through his right tentacle the one he always favoured standing on.
“Afraid so, orders are orders. It’s the third planet from the sun, the locals call it Earth. Soppy sods are really knocking it about. Listen to the list, deforestation, that’s chopping down trees. Pollution, ghastly things keep defecating all over the place. Destruction of lower species, bloody things will eat anything, unfortunately not each other though. Finally they’re all mentally unstable, the sound waves of there music are keeping the neighbouring planets up to all hours! All in all indications are that this greedy lot have lost their marbles.”
The first celestial being smiled benignly from just behind his left ear the one he always ate with. “Sounds as though we will be doing them a favour, do we know what they look like.”
“No that was the problem last time we thought they were huge lizard like creatures great lumbering things that was 65,000,000 earth years ago. Great to do that was we wiped out all the lizards leaving this mob no predators so they could run wild, the boss was livid it put him off his dinner for nearly an hour since then we’ve had nothing but complaints from this galaxy now the they’ve started chucking great lumps of metal at the neighbours you can only stand it for so long! So we have to go in and identify them properly this time before we destroy them, no boom and then we find out we’ve wiped out all their pets and left them intact like last time.
“Well I suppose we better get on with it engage hyper drive. Oh we’d better set the Neutron bombarder on maximum they won’t know what hit them.
Meanwhile back on Earth, Ben was busy he was sure he’d buried a bone around here somewhere he sniffed, he pawed at the ground removing some samples of earth for investigation, sniffed again and moved on.
Whilst he was busily engaged in this very important doggy business, the most momentous event ever to happen to the human race happened all of two foot behind him.
The celestial beings ship landed and trundled by use of its own anti gravity device into a safely camouflaged area, beneath the shade of a very large tree.
Yes you’ve guessed it!! Size is not everything, the most powerful beings in the universe are very small by earth standards, but don’t kid yourself the most powerful explosion on Earth is caused by splitting an atom and you can put several of those on the head of a pin.
Inside their vessel the celestial beings stared at there viewers.
“Is that one?”Came the interested enquiry from the first celestial being.
“How the bloody hell should I know.” Came a less interested reply, forty million species in the universe and you expect me to know them all.”
The second celestial being combed a loose hair off his toe with his tongue.
While this interesting swapping of information was going on. Ben’s acute sense of smell completely missed the presence of planet Earths most illustrious visitors, but he did appreciate a good tree. Ben raised his hind leg and with one amazingly good shot urinated straight down the nozzle of the emerging Neutron bombarder. This in turn caused an inverted nuclear reaction of cataclysmic proportions. To the aliens the explosion was equivalent to the destruction of an entire galaxy to Ben it sounded as though a butterfly had just passed wind. The explosion immediately atomised both the ship and its occupants they never even got off a distress call. In fact the disappearance of such a mighty warship caused the Galactic Council to make the Planet Earth off limits as they surmised that the beings that dwelt there had the ability to turn even their own weapons against them.
Ben never did find that bone. Wearily he turned to go home.
“Bloody humans bloody pain in the tail. If they give me any more Doggy Bix I’m leaving.”
The End
Derek K Sherratt
Copywrite 2009-11-01
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Love Makes The World Go Round
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A Smile And A Kind Word

mayem — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:41:53 +0000

It was my first night shift at the nursing home and I was looking forward to it. I arrived early so that
the evening staff could aquaint me with my duties. After the hand over my colleague(Dot) and I did a check on all residents. There was eighteen bedrooms and when we arrived outside the door of room number eleven my Dot said “We don’t bother going in that room.” I thought that perhaps whoever was in there did not like to be disturbed so I followed Dot to the next room. Throughout the night we checked on all the other rooms but left room eleven in peace. Next morning we started serving breakfast and whilst Dot went one way I went the other until I came to room eleven. I opened the door, walked in and placed the breakfast tray on the table. There was an old gentleman lying in the bed and I woke him gently. “Stan” I said, “here’s your breakfast.” I smiled at him as he opened his eyes and saw a look of bewilderment in them. I gently helped him sit up and helped him eat his breakfast. I gave him his medication and proceeded to wash and dress him. I made sure to keep a smile on my face and look him in the eyes. Eventually he started smiling back at me and holding my hand. I carefully guided him down to the day room and asked Dot which was his favourite chair. Dot looked at me as though I had taken leave of my senses and retorted “I told you we never go into his room we leave him for the day staff because he’s such a horrible man.” I didn’t understand he seamed charming to me. I sat him down and made a point of smiling at him every time that I passed him.
My shift finished and I went home but I could not get the look in Stan’s eyes out of my mind. I later found out that other staff members had trouble with Stan because of his condition and instead of taking time to build a trusting relationship with him they ignored him. I served Stan his breakfast every time I was on duty and gained his trust, so much so that I used to go in during the day and bath him as he had not let anyone bath him for two years. I took him a cup of hot chocolate in at night and held his hand and talked to him before he went to sleep.
Sadly on Christmas day I got a call from the home telling me that stan was failing fast. I drove to the home to see him and found his wife there, she had asked the day staff to phone me. As I walked into his room she told him that I was there and he opened his eyes and looked at me , he lifted his frail hand and I held it in mine. I told him that I loved him and that he was my special friend and I smiled at him. He smiled back and his smile lit up the room, then he closed his eyes and died.
His wife was kind enough to say that he had fought all day and waited for me to arrive before he died because out of all the people that had been responsible for his care I was the only one that took the time to show him love. Just a kind word and a smile can make someones life more bearable. Stan’s wife thanked me for the kindness to her husband but the real thanks for me was having the pleasure of knowing him and seeing a smile return to his face every time I walked into his room. It was a real honour to have been your friend Stan and I will never forget you.

My Grand-Daughter and Dyspraxia

mayem — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:34:32 +0000

I remember the day that my daughter told me that she was pregnant. I was to be a grandmother again but this was her first child. I went straight out and bought some baby items to start preparing fr the new arrival . I fussed over Kymm (my Daughter) all though her pregnancy.

She developed a craving for jelly babies so I stocked up on them. Then early one morning Kymm phoned me and said she had started bleeding so I jumped in the car and drove straight over there. We took her straight to the hospital and waited tentively whilst the doctors examined her. Luckily everything was fine and although she was early, much later that day, she gave birth to my beautiful Grand-daughter. I was lucky enough to be allowed in at the birth and it was amazing seeing Sarah jayne the moment she was born and the bond between us was incerdible. Over the next few months (or years) we spent such a lot of time together. I would literally kidnap her on the pretence that it was giving Kymm some much needed rest but in reality it was just that I couldn’t get enough of Sarah. We laughed and played and sang and danced. I saw her nearly every day and we both enjoyed it. Then we discovered that Sarah had dyspraxia. Dyspraxia is recognised to be an impairment of the organisation of movement. There is usually no known cause but current research sugests that it is an immaturity of neurone development in the brain rather than to brain damage.

In Sarah’s case it was discovered when she went for her first school medical. The doctor noticed that she was not walking evenly on both feet and after several tests Dypraxia was diagnosed. Sarah only had it in a milder form and after several weekly visits to a special class was quite able to develop her skills and manage her Dyspraxia very well. The headmaster at the school that Sarah attended was brilliant. He took notice of all the children there and when he found out about Sarah’s diagnosis he found out as much as he could about it and introduced varios ways to help her overcome it. He also made sure that all the children did the same exercises as Sarah so that she did not feel as if she was different. He instructed the teachers on any new developments that would help her and he gave her so much confidence. She can now do all the things that it was hard for her to learn and is a very intelligent girl. Sarah is 11 years old now and just getting ready to start the comprehensive school. Whilst she is still a little nervous of new experiences she handles them very well. She is brilliant at most computer games (especially car driving or ones where you have to fly planes) and I am so proud of her

Love V Adversity

mayem — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:35:18 +0000

My sister Hazel is a very brave lady. She knows about the power of love. A few years ago she was nursing her sick son. She remained a rock to her family even though she was falling apart inside herself. She learned how to care for him in the hospital ward and watched as he was slowly slipping away but she never cried in front of him. When she lost her beloved son she didn’t sit and bemoan her loss, yes she greaved for him, but she turned his life into a cause of celebration. She took what she learned and she put it to good use she became a nurse working at the hospital where Jay passed away, looking after the other children that needed to be cared for. She can give courage and inspiration to the parents and the children because she had once been in the same place as they are now. I am very proud of my sister and I know that because of the legacy of a very special little boy the world the world is a better place.