I’d just gotten off a flight from Iowa and was about to board another for Brainard, MN and I was standing near the gate in a cerebral limbo quandary thinking about time vs. getting coffee when a woman’s voice said: “Will your dog bite my cleaning cart?”
“What?” I asked.
“Will your dog bite my cleaning cart.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Your CLEANING CART?”
Now she was impatient.
“Yeah, I’m cleaning the women’s room and I have a cleaning cart. I thought your dog might bite it because it has chemicals.”
“No, my dog won’t bite anything or anyone.”
“Well good.” Cleaning cart woman pushed her appliance with its chemicals and foamy liquids right on by us.
I wondered if as a girl this woman had been attacked by a dog while pushing a baby sized cleaning cart.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Maybe with working in the airport she’s used to drug and bomb sniffing dogs? The stranger it is, the better poetry it makes. Unless of course, someone says, that could never happen, and maybe even then. The only time anyone tells me something could never happen in a poem or story is when it actually did.
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Steve, my mother raised me to be terrified of dogs. I have no idea why. Maybe her cleaning cart had been bitten as a small child. But, that fear is not a good thing to have internalized.
I try my best not to jump, screech, back up quickly or just run in the opposite direction when there is a dog around me. It’s tough though because I’ve been brainwashed.
If we get to meet each other when you come to the booming metropolis which is Cleveland, (are you still coming?) I will tell you a hilarious story of my encounter with a lost dog that who was literally the size of a pound of sugar.
Believe me, I even embarrass myself.
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And in other helpful dog news, my husband just told me that several therapy dogs were a part of team who supported loved ones and disaster responders after the crash of flight 3407, in Clarence Center, NY (10 miles from us) last February. One dog in particular kept gravitating to an airline employee; mental health workers on the scene took notice and were much better able to support this person.
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I have heard some very strange things from people who don’t understand/like dogs, but this one takes the cake–or perhaps, the puppy biscuit. I used to take my dog Uma to visit a nursing home, and even the Alzheimer’s patients made more sense when they asked about her.
Maybe Cleaning Cart Woman has been sniffing too much of her own chemicals?
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