balls | My Life as a Ham

Lost Balls…not those ones, those were taken from me!

2011-12-23 14.34.10

Sometimes I lose my ball under the couch. It gets lodged underneath just out of reach of my long nails. It makes me sad because I can see the ball and I can remember what it was like to have it, but it’s just too far away to reclaim. The taste of the soft rubber lingers in my mouth and I can almost feel the ball squeak between my teeth if I think about it hard enough. Thoughts and memories are funny in this way. If I could just forget the ball was under the couch then life could continue without much of a fuss about my loss. Instead, I try to find a nice sunny place to lay down and distract my thoughts with the fish tank or the fly behind blinds or sounds of possible dogs outside, but my thoughts always seem to meander back to my ball. For example, I start to think about the fly behind the blinds which reminds of my Dad’s pant’s fly (which is always down) and thinking about my Dad leads me to his best friend Uncle Paul and then BALL! It goes on like this for hours…maybe minutes…time is a difficult concept. Tragically, there is nothing in the world I can do to get the ball from under the couch…on my own. See, I have these friends with really long, furless arms on whom I can rely on in these tough situations. They can understand what I need and want without my having to tell them anything. These people are, of course, my lovely Mother and Father and they always come to the rescue. Always! Even if they don’t get the ball from under the couch just having them around makes things a little better. You better believe that ball is still in the back of my mind, but it doesn’t consume me as it did when my parents are gone. It does help that they feed me and pat me on my rump which makes the painful memory of the lost ball dissipate a teeny weeny bit. I love them very much and at the end of the day I wish I could make those word sounds so I could tell them one simple thing: GET MY BALL FROM UNDER THE COUCH, YOU BEAN EATING CABBAGE HEADS!

-Hamory (it kind of looks/sounds like memory. Throw me a bone here. Literally. Throw me a bone!)

Have I mentioned round objects?

You can’t believe how happy I am to see you! How long has it been? Forever? Something like 3 or 4 days? Oh, it’s only been 15 minutes. Whenever I don’t see you time just stops. I mean, Veda and I romp around the house with reckless abandon for the first 5 minutes, but it’s pure drudgery after that. I sniff the rug and then lick the pillow and then stare out the window and then stare at Veda and then bark at a noise and then you come home. Why can’t you at least leave me with a parting gift of a round object? It doesn’t even have to be particularly bouncy or spherical or even a special color. I’ll be happy as long as it fits in my mouth and I can throw it in the air like a tipsy father throwing his child. You have so many options from which to choose. There’s that fuzzy ball that smells like delicious mildew, that heavy one that you say is red, the one Veda ate a hole in so I can stick my face into it, or even that little piece that used to be a ball would work. Balloons!? What!? Who said balloons? I love birthdays because people bring balloons, food, hands with which to pet me, and beers to spill. I guess most men would agree those are all reasons they love parties too, but we’re getting away from my point. Balloons are magical little things that float gracefully through the air like a blimp until they explode in the air like the Hindenburg. All good things must come to an e…eh…what’s the word?…explosion! Yes. All good things must come to an explosion. Thusly, this post must come to an explosion as well. Boom.

-The Hambone