East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Or, maybe ‘Mane-a-sota’? Heh… I don’t know why that’s funny, but here’s my tale of how I got my own little… pony? For a while, anyway.
So, my town’s small enough, nothing to brag about as it’s a smaller version of the town to the west, on the other side of the river. I’ll leave it to Google to explain that side for you. But, for personal sake, I’ll call myself Alex. It’s close enough to my name, but I have several nicknames that keep me anonymous enough through life.
I know these stories have to have some personal and professional introduction, as well, but here’s the thing; we both know it’s going to develop as the tale goes on. So, I’ll start on the day I got my own… you’ll see. Read? Inner monologue? Meh, you’ll find out.
It was a nice evening and my wife had put the younger kids to bed, right on time at eight thirty. Three kids, by the way. Thanks, I know, as a brony that’s a lot. But, I’m old enough so… ADHD, I’ll tangent a lot. Just helps to make this easier to understand how real this is to me. To us.
And, here I sigh in memory of the beginning of it all. Memory can be a curse, it feels like at times. When I was sitting in the alley behind my fourplex and enjoying a root beer, since alcohol knocks me out, I heard a scurrying sound. ‘Just another of that fat cat lady’s cats’, I’d thought. I finished my can and stood up, bent my arm back, and threw it towards the dumpster and totally made it from about fifty feet away.
Totally made that clunk sound that a can makes when it hits the bottom of an empty garbage bin. Then I heard a nicker. For real, I was like… ‘say what?’ before I looked, stared at the garbage can. I was half expecting my wife to hop out holding her phone and a cheesy grin, but nothing happened.
I knew what I heard and having a pretty good curiosity I walked over to the bin (thoughts of Gordon Ramsay fill my mind) and listened. I heard heavy breathing and my heart skipped to think of finding a pony like in so many stories I’ve read. I’m no fool; it could have been anything from a dog with fangs like Ginsu knives to a grumpy cat named Miko that’s the devil’s spawn, I swear to Celestia.
Yeah, I said that.
I stopped and cleared my throat, waiting for another noise. A heavy breath replied, a sigh? Still don’t know.
“Hello?” I asked softly. ‘Please don’t be hell-cat, please don’t be hell-cat’ I prayed softly.
A whimper. I know that sound. Not a dog whimper, through. “Hey, are you alright? C’mon out.” ‘Please be a pony. Please be a pony.’
“T-t’lpa ashno?” a female voice said in a whisper.
“Uh, ashno?”
A hurumph and a snort replied. “Ashno t’al phrim?”
“Shoot,” you know what I said, but this has to be ‘E’ rated so… I knew it was a solid language so I stepped back into the faint light of the crummy, cheap, dying light that acted as a ‘spotlight’ from our landlord. Nice guy, but swears too much around the kids and complains about his age a lot. 58 isn’t that old, buddy.
“So,” I said, trying to peek behind the dumpster, “you gonna come out?”
A few seconds passed before I got tired of the scene and was ready to get another root beer. I rolled my eyes and exhaled loudly as I turned to leave. “K’pama! K’pama, tran?”
“That better mean ‘stop please’, or I’m not coming back out,” I grumbled over my shoulder.
Slowly it moved out of the shadows… A small purple dog. Purple. Dog. Purple! I just sighed and shook my head. With my imagination and all that’s wrong in my head I knelt down and held my hand out. Tapped my arm, rubbed my skin and pointed to it. A second later, green flash of fire covered its body and it was now a brown dog.
I sighed deeply again. This is stuff you don’t forget, is why I remember all the sighing, by the way.
I had my little changeling. Not a pony. Certainly not a ‘Dashie’. A changeling that didn’t speak english. But, it spoke. That was a plus. I could teach it some things.
I opened my arms and let warm, happy feelings flood through me. I waited until it got close and smiled a fanged smile that didn’t belong in a dogs mouth. I trembled slightly at the thought of those fangs in my neck. She noticed my fear, probably sensed it knowing their kind. Her ears flattened to her head and she reached a blue paw up, waving it. I snorted then chuckled.
My sandals were blue. She smiled and relaxed. “Name?” I asked. She cocked her head so I asked again and introduced myself.
She smiled a creepy Pinkie Pie like smile and buzzed a noise. Yeah, that made it better; her native language was insect.
I was seriously listening to it speak in Equestrian! Holy… Sugar honey iced tea, I overflowed with emotions. Happy ones. I saw it’s tongue lull and lap at the air. It was feeding off me. That makes it cheaper to take care of, then, right? Nah.
I giggled and waved for it to follow me as I returned home.
Opening the door I walked in and held the storm door so it, she, could walk in. The reaction I got was expected.
My wife screamed and threw a can of diet soda… soda, now I call it soda, but locals call it ‘pop’, I am so bothered by that and I can’t really explain why. Well, I can, but no one understands the logic behind the change of name-s… Right, the throwing of the can.
So, she shouts at me and my eldest son looks over like ‘whatever, I’m almost a teenager and nothing bothers me’. Gosh that’s annoying how you tweens hit that ‘IDK’ age. Okay, so I don’t scare off any overly emotional readers I’ll stop that tangent there… except that if you reply to a text with the letter ‘K’ it really pisses those of us over thirty off, so quit it!
Damn, I’m not even that old and I’ve been through so much I feel like an elder.
Okay, so ignoring my son, the changeling runs to my wife and hops on her at the table. She screams and pushes the dogling away… dogling, I think I’ll stick with that! Oh yeah, totally made that up just now.
The boy finally gets up to laugh at his mom while I slam the door and run over and grab the dogling by the scruff of its neck and yank it back, tossing it to the middle of the living room and next to my ‘oh, now I care’ son.
I feel a slap against the back of my bald head… which I deserved. Then a shout to ‘get that mutt out of here before it craps on the carpet’. Verbatim.
“Everypony calm down!” I shouted, silencing the room as my wife and son looked at me like I had a booger hanging from my nose. “Yeah, I said ‘everypony’, get over it, fam.”
“God, you’re such a dork,” my wife said as she stood next to me. I could feel her frown emanating from her and if I could it must have tasted like lemons to my dogling. “Why’d you bring that thing into the house, Sugarcube?”
“Uh, you always wanted a dog?”
She turned and slapped my arm with enough force to shut my sarcasm gland off. “That’s for when we get a house! Not here! The landlord’ll flip when he finds a full grown… are it’s feet blue?”
“Oh my gosh, dad! They totally are,” my son added with a laugh.
“Did that -expletive deleted- run through paint?!” She looked and scoured the floor like someone’d lost a contact in the four foot path the dogling took from the door to her at the table. Another swat with a heavy hand and I was a dark man with a bruise (help! Spousal abuse) and a lot of explaining to do.
“Look, it’s just a dog. Let me explain, alright?” I said that part calmly, exuding my natural calm and charisma. The dogling yawned. I yawned. Then the wife and son yawned… Yeah, that happened. Kinda cool, I thought.
Well, I made up a totally BS story with lots of hand gestures that sold it. Something about finding her outside and she had a chain on her leg and she was abused by someone. I can’t believe how easy it was to convince them and my dogling had a scar form right where I’d placed my hand to show where ‘it’d been injured’.
So, there we have it. The start of how I was able to convince my whole family that we needed a dog and that we’d need to keep it safe until we could find it a ‘better home’.
Basically, for the first time in my life I could honestly say that I consciously lied to protect an alien.
My nomination for presidency would never hold now.