Pop the Bubble (no sexual content)

(Cheyenne, 1988)

{I don't think i have one story from 1988 in this entire blog... Okay, maybe one. But that's it.}



Nikki was trying to pop the neighbor's dog with a BB gun when i got home from work. He lay flat on his belly up against the chain-link fence in our backyard, his face ruddy and his sweaty arms covered in earth.

"Mangy mutt!" I heard him scream.

Nikki's battle with Winnie, the white Maltese next door, was psychotic. He went nuts every time the dog barked, and the dog barked every time her owners weren't home. Obviously her owners weren't home right now. Apparently Nikki was home, in the middle of the day, which wasn't a comforting sign.

"Hold still, you wimpy floor mop!"

"Here we go again," Kayla said, joining me at the sliding glass door. "Canine versus asinine."

Winnie is as neurotic as dogs can get. Not that i blame her with a gun-toting maniac next door. I swear Nikki loves to hear the sound of our neighbor's car backing down their driveway. He gets very still, waiting. Then, the moment Winnie makes a peep, he's flying across the room to the closet where his old Daisy BB gun and extra box of BBs are stashed.

Kayla and I stood in the family room watching the man who created such great music aim his precious air gun at a ten-pound ball of barking fluff. The muzzle of the BB rifle poked through the fence. Winnie was hoarse from barking, Gizmo, peering through the glass door with us, swallowed dry dog spit in terror.

"Who's top dog now!" Nikki bellowed maniacally. Then we heard a pop and a loud ping! Nikki never hit Winnie, which added to his frustration, but he often pinged the neighbor's swing set, completely confounding the family who lived there. We'd seen Mr. Halpern examining his pockmarked slide while scratching his head. Lucky for Winnie, Nikki was a bad shot. Unlucky for us, he was a huge embarrassment. How do you admire a man who not only wages war with a little dog but always loses, too.

The worst was the time Winnie was in heat and Nikki had shoved Gizmo under a gap in the fence. "That'll mess with their heads," he'd snarled.

But Gizmo just stood there, hunched up, shivering. Winnie's barking scared him. His ears drooped like two wet Kleenexes. He looked pathetically back at Nikki, tried to shimmy backward under the fence into the safety of his own yard.

"What, are you, gay?" Nikki had growled at him, blocking his reentry with the butt of his BB gun. It wasn't until I walked outside and shrieked, "Have you finally lost every last one of your brain cells?" That Nikki abandoned his attempt at genetic sabotage.