Garp Goes AWOL

Hard to get back to the grindstone after an extended weekend of feasting, family and an occasional prayer. Synagogue attendance on a continual decline, like the last years of the Montreal Expos. No longer motivated to dress to the nines, who would even notice?

Did they find the cornball back-up rabbi for the parallel services from an old Seinfeld episode? Which brings me to the question: Why is everyone associated with religion  so damn corny? (My own religion that is -- although I suspect this is a universal truth. If I could quantify corny, I'd do a research study, looking for the cornball - religion correlation.)

So getting back to my long long holiday weekend...Garp, my dog goes AWOL. I walk him over to my in-laws for Friday lunch, leave him in the vestibule only to discover that my Joe Btfsplk brother-in-law didn't close the front door. (Indignantly proclaims that he never does when he visits his octogenarian parents, as if the mere thought of it never entered his vaporous mind. Of course this kind of attitude is par for the course in this topsy turvey Newhart type of world. Mental note: Name next dog Newhart.)

So after a heavy lunch where I washed down veal chops with perhaps one glass of wine too many, I had to search for Garp. Report the incident to public security, scour the neighborhood to no avail, then return to the scene of the crime to mope. While commiserating with Joe B., resigned to the fact that a fellow dog lover would find Garp for me...out from the shrubs three houses down the street, emerges my cowed chocolate Lab. I feel whole again. Sometimes there really are happy minor sub-endings.