The Other Me
‘Shut In’ ii. When I was little, Nick showed me the illustrations of the dog breeds in the D encyclopaedia. The pictures – for a kid of about five who hadn’t seen a lot of dogs – fascinated me. I marvelled at the size of the Great Dane, the austerity of the German Shepherd, and the inquisitive look of the Beagle. But the dog that really drew my attention was the Siberian Husky. It was just so wolf-like. As a kid, I owned a couple of mongrels. One – a Shepherd/Cocker Spaniel cross (when I was about eight or nine) – ran away with a pack of stray dogs that…
The Other Me
‘Shut In’ i. The only safe place was home. Home, I could control everything. There were no dangers. Nor pressures. There was always the worry when I went out that there’d be an issue, and I’d have to rush home. It was a tremendous burden to carry, and the weight of it filled me with expectation that something would happen, which it then did. At least at home if anything happened, I was already where I needed to be. At first, I had trouble going anywhere – even the mailbox. I’d feel flighty, and would want to rush back inside. Eventually, I got comfortable with that distance. Later, my cousins…