Kickass and Being an Old Fool by Bill Stokes

Attribution: Anderson Mancini from Sao Paulo, Brazil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, does his best to help the keeper maintain his standing as “old fool” since that is an identity that he seems to wear most comfortably, and most often.

And an incident yesterday so demonstrated the keeper’s “old fool” identity that he hesitates to confess it lest it advances him to the rank of “hopeless old fool.”

It had to do with the keeper’s attempt to make a point with the driver who rode the keeper’s bumper, first by slowing that driver down and then by making it difficult for him to pass.

In truth, it seems that the keeper’s totally dumb action had been almost instinctive, and had Phyllis been with him he probably would have been able to resist it.

In further retrospection, the keeper questions the old adage that confession is good for the soul: he does not feel better for having admitted to being an “old fool” and might ask that instead of “old fool” he be thought of as testosterone-gorged “dumb kid” with car, if that identity was not so far off lots of marks as to be ridiculous.

The truth obviously is that the keeper’s “old fool” identity is an “old shoe” and he needs to wear it.