Chapter 3: Doctor Marcy and the Dog I Never Owned

I thought maybe I was crazy. I went to a shrink. Stretched myself out on her sofa.

Dr. Marcy. She had her legs crossed tight as scissors. These real nice legs knifing out of a pencil skirt. Her hair was pulled back in a bun.

“Tell me what’s troubling you,” she said and she watched me with her clinical eyes.

Eyes cold as scalpels. Every glance slashing a piece of me away. Blink blink blink cut cut cut, she hacked into me. I felt like a frog in a seventh-grade science class.

I started to tell her about the bunnies, then one of them said, “Mention us and we’ll make you jump off a building.” I believed that they would. So instead of mentioning the bunnies, I told Dr. Marcy that I’ve been missing my dog lately. This dog that I had as a kid. I never had a dog when I was a kid, but I had to think of something, and that was the first thing that came out of my mouth: “I miss the dog I had as a kid.”

“What happened to it?” Dr. Marcy asked.

Now I’m spending an hour a week delving into the psychological ramifications of losing a dog that I never even owned.