The legend of Skippy

I love dogs.

Okay, scratch that. I love most dogs. The kind that don't yip, or yap, or menace, or bite.

Smash cut to Rancho Penasquitos, the mega-suburban portion of deep suburban San Diego, where I spent my early childhood. I lived on Black Hills Road, a sloping street with lots of unfaithful daddies, quasi-alcoholic mommies, and kids on our Penasquitos Girls and Boys Soccer teams. We played out in that street: kickball, tetherball, trading baseball cards. We stayed out past dusk, until our mothers started screaming for us in that tone that meant business.

I liked to ride my bike down Black Hills. I loved my bike. It was a powder-blue thing with streamers flowing from the handles. Yes, streamers. That's how much I loved my bike. I decorated it like a Tijuana whore on clearance.

I was in Mrs. Owens' class -- again -- so I must've been in second grade. The year earlier, I'd been bumped up to her class from first grade for some reason that still eludes me. It pissed off my parents and they bitched to the principal, but to no end. "Fucking Poway school district," my father liked to grouse. "We moved here for what?"

It was an afternoon in April, somewhere close to my birthday. I rode down Black Hills, past the house my parents called the car wash because the postman who lived there was always out washing and waxing, past Glyn's house. Glyn had a dog. That dog was Skippy.

Skippy was the six-pound fount of my every fear.

Oh, I was no pussy. I could stand up to every other dog in the neighborhood, including the aptly named Mr. Big, who used to pad around and scare the shit out of my brother. But Skippy was a hateful little mutt, and he had it out for me.

I cruised down the street, hair and streamers both flying back behind me. I was wearing a red jacket, pigtails, and a big old grin.

Then I saw Skippy.

I screeched.

Slammed on the brakes.

Soared over the handlebars.

Hit the ground and skinned everything there was to skin.

Then the worst happened: Skippy came to get me. He was running, barking. His tongue was out. I lay there, too freaked out to move.

He reached me and began to lick my knee.

I went out of my fucking mind.

Three doors up, my father had just pulled his always-worse-for-wear Plymouth Fury into the driveway. He cruised in and said to my mother (who, as always, was cursing the fact that he'd come home): "I just saw this kid in a red jacket go flying over the handlebars." He popped a beer and propped up his feet. "Where's Allison?"

I burst in the door, bleeding, Skippy hot on my heels. My mother took one look at me and went -- as my father called it -- straight to panic. I was right there with her. "Skippy's coming to get me!" I told my family.

My brother Adam walked over. At that point, Adam was the delicate one in the family. The sensitive soul, the sweet boy, he hadn't yet grown his thick skin.

He stamped his foot.

The dog fled.

From then on, I pedaled uphill.