Playing Ball with The Mick

I took my friends’ little dog to the South Jetty beach and we played ball at low tide. It was just me and the dog. No one else was around, except a lone, aggressive clammer.

He’s called The Mick. He is insane for the ball. He will launch himself into the ocean to retrieve it. He will splash into tidepools after it. He will dig to China to find it. I’ve never had a ball dog. They are relentless in a goofy way and I found myself laughing at The Mick’s ball antics. The more laughter in my life these days, the better. These are dire, laughless times in America when the State separates innocent children from their parents and locks them away in a concentration camp without moral due process. A reactionary commentator calls it a “summer camp.” The late night hosts will have a field day with that lie and yuck it up with the audience. It’s not funny. And I bet 99.999 percent of Americans don’t remember that the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the internment of Japanese-American citizens in WW II was constitutional.

What have we become? What can I do? Can I get back into the fight?

The Mick and I played for an hour. Gulls napped on the wrack line. The maniacal clammer clammed. The water sparkled like sequins on a Flapper’s dress. The Mick was oblivious to it all. He didn’t care about birds or similes. He kept his eye on the ball.

His focus educated me.

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