Funny Friday: My First Encounter with a Bulldog 63

 I was about five years old when my one and only Aunt married Dick. I was dressed in a dark blue suit with a matching bowtie (I wonder where the tie is these days?) I was ring bearer in the wedding, getting to walk down the aisle with the music playing, standing quietly off to one side. It was a grand event, and coming from a baren branch of the family tree, one of few big family events in my childhood. 

Dick had two brothers and two sisters.  He and his brothers had been out the night before, and was running late with the beer, the ice, and getting dressed for the wedding.  He showed up at our house, as we were getting ready to leave for the church and was sent into a back bedroom to get dressed. 

For some reason that I never heard an explanation for, he and his brothers had picked up an old English Bulldog on their night out on the town.  Unbeknownst to me the bulldog, was tied to the air compressor in the corner of the garage. This was no small compressor, it was war surplus out a bomber plant at the end of WWII,  it was built to paint giant airplanes.  

I was ordered into the garage and into the back seat of the car. I rounded the corner of the car and came face to face with the bulldog. She barked, I shrieked as only a five year old boy, or gay-man can. I swear that dog was the size of a hippopotamus, she was built like one.  She took off running, dragging several hundred pounds of compressor across the floor. I was stuffed in the back seat of the car and told the "get a grip!"  The compressor was pushed back against the wall with the dog still attached to it. I don't know who was more afraid, the dog or the five year old.  I don't think either of us had ever encountered one like the other before that evening.  

It took me decades to overcome my irrational fear of dogs, I hope the dog got over her fear of five year olds, and men who sound like them. I bet she was a sweet hearth when you didn't shriek.