Force Field

My little Yorkie, Bo, is fond of a squeaky toy. His greed tickles us. He reminds me of a three-year-old, so wild for a new plaything he requires presents if someone else is getting them. Lately he has learned toys come in bags, and we have had great fun, pushing the excitement to a crescendo with ‘find the toy.’ When all the goodies are distributed (we have three dogs, and they think there should be a prize for each), he goes back to the shopping bag, hoping for more. Since he discovered toys in bags, he greets me at the door whenever I go shopping. Lately, if there isn’t something for him, he noses the bags forlornly, or, if I place the haul on the counter, leaps and twirls, trying over and over to reach the counter top where he is sure we have hidden something good that is rightfully his.

“That’s so sad,” one of us is sure to say.

The last time it happened my husband asked me to stitch up some of the old toys I’ve stored in the spare bedroom, waiting for a day when I will repair them. Observing Bo’s delirium, I thought it was a reasonable request. So I spent thirty minutes, cramming stuffing back through rips, sewing up seams, and (only once, since I could hear Bo go crazy downstairs) testing the squeaker.

When I finished, I snuck outside, then came in the back door with a Wal-Mart bag full of long unseen squeaky toys. The two other dogs thought it was a good game. Not Bo. He can smell new.

Which is why, when I went to Wal-Mart the other day and thought of squeaky toys in the parking lot after I had finished my regular shopping, I went back in to check out the dog section. I had also forgotten baby Benedryl for our itchy dog, so it wasn’t entirely a spoiled dog return trip. No Benedryl, and only two acceptable squeaky toys. As I said, we have three dogs.

No problem, I would stop at Fred’s on the way home. Fred’s had no Benedryl, and no suitable squeaky toys. Next on the route—Eckard’s, which had Benedryl, but no squeaky toys. Which is why I found myself in Big Lot’s parking lot, thinking in the simplest terms about energy and attractor fields: Thoughts are energy. Types of energy vibrate at different levels, or fields. Energy vibrations attract similar energy in that field, which is why, when you feed an addiction, you crave more. And here I was standing on asphalt, having stretched a thirty minute shopping trip into two hours, trapped in Bo’s squeaky toy attractor field, which requires much more energy than you would ever suspect.

Money—that’s one aspect of the field. Without our money Bo would have never been introduced to squeaky toys (let’s not explore squeaky toy history or American and Chinese industrial empires, which are tied into squeaky toy consciousness). My husband is the one with the job. He has to expend energy in order to attract money. I do the shopping. When I am shopping, I am expending energy I could be using in other ways if I weren’t shopping. You get the picture.

One day I had a good idea, and ideas are energy. In fact, spiritual teachings say you are only an idea, no matter how much it seems you are made of solid matter, so pay attention. That day I thought the dogs needed toys. Sugar and Spunky, the white, pound terriers, agreed it was a good idea. But Bo immediately developed a squeaky toy gestalt on which the whole material world might be turning.

Bo’s squeaky toy energy has incorporated my husband’s and my energy in order to attract more squeaky toy energy, which has materialized into a basket full of colorful squeaky toys in various states of disrepair which often litter our floor, which requires more energy to pick them up, or, more likely, to tug and toss whenever Bo gets a notion, which is often. And I just stopped writing about squeaky toy energy to take many minutes to look up squeakers. I’ve been thinking I could make those squeaky toys, as well as repair them. So even though on Monday in Big Lot’s parking lot, I realized my brain had been captured and trapped by the attractor field of squeaky toy energy, I have not been able to raise my own vibrational level to escape velocity.

If some scientist wants to investigate, she may discover squeaky toys and Bo’s thought process may be central in the formation of gravity, time and space.

Parallel universes abound. If it weren’t squeaky toys, it might be….pansies. A friend recently took me shopping with her. She needed a few pansies for her yard. Six in fact.

“Do you want any?” she asked.

“No,” I said, wondering if we had time to stop by the discount store on our way home, so I could add to my emergency stash of squeaky toys. “I’d never plant them.”

But the colors…the violets and blues, the velvety reds and rusts and yellows and mauves. Chocolates. Pansies…a nice gift to take to friends.

Which is why, after buying enough pansies to supplement my friend’s traditional six and getting some to take to a couple of people we plan to visit, I now have six of my own, waiting. Six? Could that possibly be enough? I wonder if they have gotten any new ones at the nursery. So bright, so bon vivant here in the waning of the year.

Quick, Bo, wake up. Catch this!