It was inevitable that this should happen one day. He was a big, drooling, affectionate brute who would hump anyone or anything that didn’t run away, and he couldn’t be allowed to continue to attack people, even though he meant no harm. It was either have him fixed, or risk an eventual lawsuit.

Oakie, of course, was a dog. A big, handsome boxer who weighed probably close to 80 pounds but thought he was a lap dog, as my legs would attest after that one episode when he tried to crawl up onto the chair with me. And he belonged to my boss, Walter Surrey. I’ve written about Walter in the past, and if you’ve read those episodes, you may recall that his sense of humor was legendary . . . which was fortunate for me in light of my own occasionally warped thought processes.

Anyway, there was poor, unsuspecting Oakie, about to face the ultimate sadist . . . the snip-snip artist . . . the de-baller who would irreversibly change him from a magnificent example of horny masculinity into a pitiful, sniveling, shame-faced eunuch. And Daddy couldn’t even be there with him, because he had to leave on a business trip to China. It would be up to his Mommy to see him through the worst time of his life.

But that didn’t mean Daddy didn’t love him. In fact, Walter was so worried about poor Oakie, he insisted that I send him (Walter, not Oakie) a telex — the fastest and most high-tech means of communication with China in those days before cell phones — as soon as I knew the surgery was over and Oakie was all right. And off Walter went to the Orient, leaving me to figure out how to word a telex that would surely be read by the censors in Beijing. This was going to be fun.

Walter’s wife Dana dutifully called to let me know that the procedure had gone well and Oakie had come through it like a champ . . . as yet blissfully unaware of the loss of his precious family jewels. And I sat down to compose the following message, sadistically envisioning the Chinese censors trying to figure out what the hell it meant:

“Oakie’s bark now one octave higher. Sends love and thanks. Brenda”

Walter told me later that the American clients with whom he was traveling had laughed themselves sick when they saw my telex and he explained who Oakie was. We never did hear anything from the Chinese officials.

It was only later that I realized I could have summed it all up in just two words: “Oakie doakie.”

Damn!

*. *. *

That all happened some 40 years ago, and Oakie has long since been reunited with his cojones on the other side of that legendary Rainbow Bridge. Walter left us in 1989; but stories of his mischief live on in memory, and I’ll probably toss a few more of those your way from time to time. But for now, I’ll be saying good night.

“Good night, Walter. Good night, Oakie . . . Oakie, no! Down, boy! Down! Bad boy, Oakie! . . . Walter, that is NOT funny!”

Brendochka
1/18/24