David McElroy

I shot a casual photo of Lucy in front of our house this afternoon. She was happy in the warm summer sunshine. And I liked the perspective of the house behind her. It made her seem like the world’s friendliest guard dog.

After I posted the photo in a couple of places, a friend called me to say how much she loved it. Then she asked if I could take the same sort of picture of her dog in front of her house. I hesitated.

My house is an inexpensive old home in a mixed neighborhood. It was built in 1927. It originally didn’t even have running water. (I don’t know when the kitchen and bathroom were added.) I bought it six years ago as a cheap foreclosure. It’s nothing fancy.

My friend’s home is in a high-end suburb in a much nicer part of town. It’s worth about half a million dollars. The house has all the features that modern consumers want. But to anyone who understands symmetry and principles of design beauty, her house is a monstrosity. It’s an ugly crime against design.

How could I explain to my friend that her fancy house would look terrible as a background for her dog? How could I say that without insulting her taste?

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My plumbing problem wasn’t a big deal, but the solution was beyond my meager fix-it skills. I went next door to ask my neighbor whether he knew how to replace the “seat and springs” on a faucet.

He and I worked on the problem together for about an hour before he decided he couldn’t do it either, so he called another neighbor — someone I don’t know — who lives about a block away. He said Brian used to work in plumbing a long time ago, so he could fix it.

After my neighbor left and it was just Brian and me, we were comparing notes about which neighbors we knew and didn’t know. I mentioned one guy who’s never been very friendly and Brian agreed.

“He seems kind of like a jerk, but I suspect it’s mostly that he’s not very social,” he said. “He just doesn’t have any social skills, unlike you, ’cause you’re obviously social and outgoing. I’ll bet you could talk to anybody. He can’t do that.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking, but I laughed inside. Me? “Social and outgoing”? Well, I see why he thinks so. And I found myself conscious once again that I was running a “social script.” Without thinking about it, I was playing the part of the friendly neighbor.

But I was just running an unconscious social script. It didn’t mean a thing.

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It was early on a Sunday morning. I can’t describe my parents’ bedroom, but I know where we lived. I can’t tell you what else was going on. I just remember playing with my father on their bed.

My favorite game on all of these Sunday mornings was when he would let me climb onto his legs and he would lift me into the air, higher than a little boy knew was possible. I laughed gleefully and wanted to ride again and again.

I was a happy little boy in those moments.

This faded photograph from my baby book is the only physical evidence of those times, but my memory is more powerful than a photo anyway. You might not be able to tell in the darkness of the old picture, but that’s my father’s face on the lower left. I’m on top of his legs and he’s holding onto me with his outstretched hands.

Now that my father has been dead for more than three years, I wish I could erase all of the bad things about him in my memory. I wish it were possible to lose all the evidence of the angry and abusive narcissist who hurt me.

I wish I could hold onto just the loving and tender moments with my father, because those memories are powerful.

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