The Case of the Levitating Dog

Belief and denial are a dog's best friend

It was warm last Tuesday. Not hot, just warm and the traffic was heavy on Highway 91 heading east into Corona. It's funny, I can feel the heat of the day change as I drive into work in Riverside. I drive the 91 almost every day from Long Beach and just after Highway 55 I can feel the heat start to encroach into the cabin of the Mustang.

It was 77 degrees when I left home at sea level and as I entered Corona it was about 85, at least that's what the dash temperature reading said. Normally I'm 43, overweight and none too attractive, but for some reason on Tuesday I was 10 years younger, 50 pounds lighter and handsome as all get out. Hey, it's my story, and I'm telling it how I want to -- so there.

ANYWAY, this handsome 33 year old god of a man (me) is headed eastbound on the 91 at around 12:30 p.m. when it happened.

As I near Serfas Club Drive, I see a Toyota van ahead of me swing wildly across three lanes of traffic. "What the hell is this guy's problem?" I think to myself and start scanning the freeway for problems. That's when I see it.

It was a big brown pitbull-type dog floating 3 feet above the freeway. No not 3 feet away, 3 feet above. He was levitating across the freeway lanes in hot pursuit of the Toyota van.

It was levitating in an odd fashion. It wasn't howling or flailing and it wasn't bloody or obviously injured in any way. The dog was on its side, as though it were lying on an invisible moving table. It's back was to me and it's legs pointed towards the van. It's sideways momentum sent it floating across the traffic lanes, missing cars by inches. I missed it by a good 20 feet, so no need to change my shorts. I saw it hit ground behind me and roll violently underneath a truck. That's the last I saw of the strange creature.

That's when reality set in, and I realized that the dog had been on the freeway and it had been hit, probably by the van. Nothing I could do but feel bad for the poor dog. However, I also realized that since I had never seen the dog being hit, it was only my own perception of reality that ascribed his flight to being hit by a car.

Maybe he wasn't hit by a car. Maybe he was the first of his kind; the first levitating dog.

Perhaps he was sitting in his backyard that morning wishing that he was somewhere else. He was out of water, his food was stale and no one had picked up last night's poop.

Toots, for that is his name, was sitting there on the ankle-high grass thinking to himself.

Dogs are big thinkers. They worked out Einstein's theory of relativity when man was still trying to figure out how to make fire from a couple sticks. They didn't say anything because they couldn't. They're dogs. They go woof woof. Not a lot of deep conversations start with woof woof and a wagging tail.

ANYWAY, Toots was sitting in his backyard thinking about just how bored he was. All he wanted was a little fun now and then, clean water, food and someone to pick up his poop. Really not that much to ask of from his human. But he believed that he would get all of these things eventually.

Dogs are also big believers. They have to be. How else would you explain all of the times people have beaten their dogs only to have the dogs come back for more. They believe people are worth the trouble. Why? I don't know. I'm not a dog. That's belief for you.

So, Toots is sitting in his backyard having a think and when he'd thunk enough he decides he's too good for gravity. He believes that gravity is the weakest force in the universe and he decides to believe that he's stronger than it. By the way, Toots hated his name. His owner named him Toots because of his unfortunate Irritable Bowel Syndrome. How would you like being named for your inability to stop passing gas? It's humiliating.

As Toots thought about how much he hated his name and how he was so much better than gravity, it happened. He started to hover. At first it was just a couple inches above the grass, then as he believed harder that he was better than gravity it was several feet.

"OK, so I'm better than gravity and I can float," Toots thought, because he couldn't speak. We already went over that, keep up. "It's cool and all but that doesn't really help me, now does it?"

So Toots started thinking again and he decided that if being better than gravity made him float, then being better than the fence at his back would make him float towards the house.

Toots crinkled his brow and started believing that he was better than the back fence and he floated towards the house. When he reached the house he could hear the TV coming from the second floor. He believed himself up to the second floor and looked in. His owner was watching the steady gorgeous color of her 42 plasma television. Too bad Toots was color blind.

On the television was a dog's dream. Glenn Beck was talking about how everyone in the Democratic Party was a bunch of godless heathens who hated America and only he and his tea baggers understood the joy of God and the American Way.

Well, that's all Toots needed to hear. That was just the kind of denial of reality he was looking to believe in. Toots tucked that away, and he knew that with a combination of denial and belief he was ready to really fly.

Off he shot into the sultry summer sky like a pitbull Krypto, sans cape.

He flew across the neighborhood, stopping only long enough to pee on every tree top. No dog would ever own these trees like Toots owned these trees. He saw the neighbor's cat on the fence, but decided to leave it alone.

You see dog's love and hate cats. They love the freedom cats exude and hate them because it's something they'll never have. Except Toots. Toots was now free. No more leashes or heal commands for him. He was flying. Now Toots could join the cats in being free.

Toots chased a flock of those damn pigeons. For their part, the pigeons were so amazed at seeing a dog chase after them in the sky that they forgot to flap their wings and plummeted to the ground, breaking several car windows.

The freedom of belief and denial was exhilarating to Toots. This was the best he had ever felt. If he wanted to go east he believed west wasn't good enough, if he wanted to go down he denied that the sky was so great.

Toots decided that his perception of right and wrong could be strong enough to change the world. He would remake the world in the image of dogs.

That was when Toots made his mistake. He looked to his right and saw in the distance the ribbon of autos traveling east and west on the 91. Toots decided he had one more mission before changing the world forever. He needed to chase and catch those damn cars.

Toots lined himself up with the freeway and began making his diving run at the freeway. He would finally catch himself a car. He picked out a big one, a van and believed it was what he wanted with all of his might. However, he forgot to deny the laws of mass and speed and when he realized his mistake it was already too late.

That was the end of Toots, the world's first levitating dog.

Is this true, no, but if I believe Stephen Hawking's assertion that there are many universes, a multiverse if you will, then maybe it is, somewhere.