The Dog

Before I start posting about Jay's current girlfriend Jessica I want to give you some more insight into his personality. To do that I need to tell you about my parent's old dog Bark. I'm a huge animal lover; I love dogs and have three cats. That said I still hate that dog. My parents got him from a shelter after I left for college. He was always hyper, loved to jump on people and was just generally disagreeable. However, if you were willing to show the slightest bit of dominance the dog would eventually calm down.

One day I'm home from college and Jay and his brother John came over to visit. The dog starts barking and jumping up on them, but I get him in order and we head inside. However, the dog doesn't want to leave Jay alone. Every couple of minutes he saddles up to Jay and starts trying to hump his leg.

"Jay, just push him off and yell 'NO!' when he does that. He'll stop if you just yell at him."
"OK"

However, Jay just will not yell at the dog. The dog keeps coming over, and I keep having to push him off Jay. This goes on for a while.

"Jay, seriously just yell at the dog. I'm getting tired of coming over here and pushing him off you. If you just show some aggression he won't come back"
"Yeah, man"

Sure enough he doesn't yell at the dog and continues to let the dog basically molest him.

"Dude, I'm serious just yell at the damn dog. He's not going away until you show some dominance."
"Ahhh... what the hell. It's easier to just give him what he wants"

At which point Jay just sticks out his leg and lets the dog furiously hump away. For two full minutes. At which point I've had enough and give the dog a time out in the garage.

Now you may think that Jay was just making a joke. Really though if you knew him well you'd know that he was serious. In his head he did the math of putting forth some small amount of effort to deal with the dog vs. letting the dog hump his leg. The humping just won that calculation. This is how incapable of action Jay sometimes is.

In his head it's:
"My girlfriend is crazy, but it would be a lot of work to date. I'll just stay with her"
"My job really sucks, but it would take effort to find something else. I'll just stay here"
"My gums have been bleeding, but I don't want to find a dentist. I'll just put up with it" (true story by the way)

Jay could so easily make positive changes in his life, but he always chooses to let those problems keep humping away.


Bonus story: while I was in college Jay and John were house sitting for my parents. Bored, they dug into my dad's monstrous collection of VHS porn. Sure enough, not long after popping in a tape the VCR broke down trapping the pornographic evidence. They decided to leave my parents a note which read:
"I'm sorry. This broke when I was watching a tape.
- Bark the Dog"