A bird is not a dog.\u00a0How could I be so confused?\u00a0Standing in line at Ace hardware, the people around me are astonished:<\/p>\n
\u201cA bird could be\u00a0a dinosaur,\u00a0a door bell,\u00a0a down vest,\u201d\u00a0they explain,\u00a0\u201cbut a bird is not a dog;
\nmoreover, a\u00a0marriage is not a relationship, a\u00a0family is not a classroom, a\u00a0minivan is not a skateboard.
\nHow could you be so confused?”<\/p>\n
\u201cWell\u201d I replied,\u00a0\u201cIf the bird learned to bark, maybe my children would stop whining about a puppy;\u00a0if the bird learned to sing,\u00a0maybe I could sell the radio;\u00a0if the bird learned to speak,\u00a0maybe it would answer the telephone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried that once.The bird chirped a few times\u00a0said it was for me, flew back to its cage
\nSuddenly my cell phone rang.\u00a0Everybody froze.\u00a0It was my wife.\u00a0\u201cYou idiot!\u201d she explained,\u00a0\u201cA bird is not a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Her voice in my ear was as hard as cuttlebone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bird is not a dog.\u00a0How could I be so confused?\u00a0Standing in line at Ace hardware, the people around me are astonished: \u201cA bird could be\u00a0a dinosaur,\u00a0a door bell,\u00a0a down vest,\u201d\u00a0they explain,\u00a0\u201cbut a bird is not a dog; moreover, a\u00a0marriage is not a relationship, a\u00a0family is not a classroom, a\u00a0minivan is not a skateboard. How … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pafo44-9Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimkalmbach.net\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}