Dead Crush #16

It’s 1986. Fall. For the first time in my life I have a locker. I’m wearing the teal mascara and the obscenely shiny lip gloss that I’m finally allowed. On the rest of me I’m wearing something fussy and shrimp-colored: there may or may not be fishnet involved. I feel grown up in 7th grade, where I get to go to a different classroom for each class and take real notes. No more recess. Just thesis statements and protractors from now on, and my own locker to keep my trapper and silver paint pens which smell really really good. And there’s something so, I don’t know, Degrassi about lockers. But as I open up mine, I hear a group of similarly coifed and outfitted girls whisper as they pass me: “Oh my god, she has dogs in her locker.”

While all of the other pubescent Whitesnake video wannabes were plastering their lockers with the Coreys, Kirk, Chad, and the occasional Benetton ad, I was carefully debating between the Pembroke and Welsh Corgi photos, clipped from my monthly issue of Dog Fancy. I also had dainty Chihuahuas, muscular Jack Russells, and shadowy Weimeraners there to greet me each time I needed my Algebra book, or at the end of a long day of bullying (I was the bullied) when I was most in need of comfort. Though I did have crushes on some teen stars (I preferred Feldman to Haim), my locker was the only thing at school and pretty much anywhere that was really mine, and who I was was a dog lover. So that’s right, bitches. I have dogs in my locker. Just let me get my coat out and get out of the building so I can get on the bus where you can continue to torment me.

Benji was the first dog I really remember loving. His film debut and my birth occurred nearly simultaneously in 1974. While my sister and I agreed on the necessity of Holly Hobby, Barbie, and Strawberry Shortcake, Benji was mine and mine alone. My first hospital visit was made much more tolerable by his stuffed replica, who wore a fake metal tag inscribed with his name, and who had to be pried out of my hands as I slipped out of consciousness in the operating room. My first words upon waking were “Who took my Benji?” I also remember sneaking a battered novelization of Oh Heavenly Dog in with my other less trashy selections at the library, to be taken up to my room immediately to be devoured before a sibling made fun of me.

Benji was played by the somehow appropriately named Higgins, whose progeny (none as cute as the original) went on to play him in subsequent films. Of course the greatest Benji movie of all time is For the Love of Benji. I cried every time I saw it, and not much made me cry in those days (things have changed). Actually, the only things that made me cry when I was eight years old were things involving animals: Old Yeller and the Beverly Cleary book Socks are two other tear-jerkers I remember from this dim vault. The first time I remember seeing For the Love of Benji was probably in ’82 during Christmas break. This was long before my town had a video rental place, so if you were a kid and wanted to see a movie after it was in the theater, you had to wait until they either showed it in the church basement or during Christmas break at school. I walked to the elementary school with other bored kids in my neighborhood, kids who also had parents at work and had run out of ways to torment their siblings and pets. It was always weird to go into the school when it was out of session, and to sit in the huge dark gym on the floor, while some stay-at-home mom served bags of stale popcorn. When the projector started whirring and the crackly sound system started, everyone would begin to cheer and whistle. The main things I remember about the film, which I haven’t seen in nearly 20 years, are that Benji has something tattooed on his paw that bad guys need, some kind of secret code, and that in order to find him they end up in Greece, where Benji faces all kinds of obstacles with a background of Greek ruins. He seemed so alone, clearly not understanding his importance or what might happen to him, in a world of adults and their money-grubbing ways. He was an innocent. Which is also what made me cry during the countless times The Incredible Journey was shown in the basement of First Presbyterian. Those poor animals. They didn’t ask for this life. I mean, for the love of Benji, where do these humans get off treating poor adorable trained animals like pawns in their quest for riches? These are the thoughts that plagued me as a weird little girl, wiping away my tears quickly before mean boys saw when they turned the lights on, before I trudged home in the depressing Indiana winter dusk.

Clearly the Benji pictured here is dead. This doesn’t make me sad; dogs don’t live long. What makes me sad is that there don’t seem to be animal heroes for kids anymore. Maybe some exist that I don’t know about, but do kids still worship animals the way I did? I don’t really know any kids right now, so maybe someone can help me out with this. Along with the other embarrassing things I never grew out of, such as a variety of colorful nervous tics, I never outgrew my obsession with dogs. I don’t really seem to need a male partner anymore, but when I was faced with the possibility of maybe having to give up my dog several weeks ago, I freaked. And realized that life without dogs isn’t a life I can ever have again. It’s very hard for my little dog to adapt to city life—peeing on sidewalks instead of in parks, wearing an anti-bark citronella collar so we can live in a building with other people, and being surrounded by more people, dogs, and trash than she is used to—but she is doing wonderfully. When I think of what she’d do for me, and what I’d do for her…well, I get a little choked up.
(We’re both doing great, by the way—as predicted, it turns out that we’re city folk after all).