A Lion! Oh My!

Another tale of youthful innocence….

I spent most of my days as a youth in Arizona…in our backyard pool. We lived on the corner of a very busy street so we often had random ‘visitors’ wander into our yard. One day while my lil' bro and I were splashing about the pool playing ‘let’s see how long you can hold your breath under water while I sit on you’, we were interrupted by a ferocious creature who came charging in from the side gate. I shot right out of the water screaming, “A lion, a lion!” and ran in the house to get my mom – yes, I left my baby brother to fend for himself against the man eating lion. In response to my shrieks of pure horror she came bolting outside and to both our surprise there was my brother petting the lion! “Mom!” I screeched, “a lion, a lion, why is he petting a lion!?!” She, as a typical response to most of my reactions, burst into uncontrollable laughter, “Oh sweetie, that’s not a lion, it’s just a fluffy dog.” Now, to give myself some credit it was in fact a Chow and to this day I still insist they look exactly like lions.

We ended up babysitting this 'lion' for sometime until his owners finally came to rescue me from him. And yes, he did bite me many times, turns out – Chows are actually meaner than lions. Every time I came face to face with that dog and even today when I see a chow I remember that rush of pure terror that flooded my veins when I thought for sure that I was going to be eaten alive.

So what do we learn from this little anecdote? Well, I’m not exactly sure but it is a good story to tell at parties – trust me, when you add the gestures and facial expressions it’s a killer.

Ok so yes, I will provide a brief lesson. What I learned from my encounter with the lion was a real life application of the old cliché 'you can’t judge a book by its cover'. More specifically, I see it as a representation of life’s lovely little challenges. At first they come at us as fierce lions but in reality, and after we calm down, they are really just fluffy dogs – not too bad. Now, I don’t really like dogs because they bite and smell and I don’t really like trials because they are hard so no matter how you put it I’m still not a huge fan. Nevertheless, the basic point is things are often not as bad as you think they are…even if they do bite a little.

Just remember: take a deep breath before shouting lion or your mom will probably laugh at you.