I had a friend several years ago that I went through college with named Gary. He was sort of a country bumpkin. Just a regular guy that lived in the upper peninsula of Michigan. His family owned a hunting resort where he worked before he started school. He started school late in his life at about the age of thirty.
I worked in the same plant that he did. We rode to work together. He was full of stories from his time at the family business. It was really fun hanging around with him.
One of the stories he told me was that a moose hit his pickup truck one morning. Moose are enormous animals with nasty dispositions. Every other animal in the woods pretty much leaves them alone. The moose hit his truck and demolished it, and they never found the moose. It just left his truck a mangled pile of metal. Of course to hear him tell the story with his sense of humor and ability to put things into words was very funny.
Gary told me a story about His black Labrador retriever one day on our way to work. He was a dog guy and really loved his dog. His Lab was an inside dog and rarely was outside except to do go out and do what dogs do. He was coming home from town one day nearing his house he saw his Labrador Retriever standing by his mailbox at the end of his long driveway. He stopped the pickup truck and said to him, “How did you get way out here?” The dog didn’t respond very well so Gary grabbed him and stuck him in the truck, intending to take him to the house.
As he drove down the driveway the dog growled at him which really annoyed Gary. The dog had never done that before. Gary said “What is your problem?”, and continued up the driveway. When they reached the house Gary looked up and in the big picture window of his house was his dog. The one in the truck wasn’t his. He had picked up a stray and didn’t know it. Gary turned slowly and looked at the stray with terrified eyes and realized he was in big trouble. The stray just turned to him and growled again.
Gary slipped out of the truck, not making any sudden movements, leaving the passenger side door open so the stray could leave and walked slowly toward the front door of his house. When he got inside, he hugged his dog and thanked God he had not tried to coral the stray any further. Of course his dog greeted him like he had been away on a month long trip.
He told me that he didn’t see the stray get out of his truck and never saw it again. He didn’t know where it came from and who it belonged to.
What kinds of things have you allowed to invade your life that simply doesn’t belong to you? There are people, habits and circumstances that everyone experiences but they just need to get away from. You need to realize that they don’t belong to you. You need to leave the pickup truck passenger side door open and walk away.
photo provided by: andre-spieker-238-upsplash.com
