When you feel like you’re in-between a dog and a fire hydrant

By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night, thinking up evil plans. You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out, simply because you have the power to do so. — Micah 2:1New Living Translation

Have you ever noticed the pleasure of expression and the jubilant demeanor of a male dog in the presence of a fire hydrant?

His after-thoughts seem to be one of reprieve, never mind the object to which his release was directed or anything that happens to be in-between.

It must be an awful and repulsive thing to be the catch-all for the displeasures that can be generated from the hostilities of catching someone else’s pure hell just because…

I can only imagine how the similarities one may equate to aligning these circumstances to be equal to being caught in-between a dog and a fire hydrant; it’s only six but I’m certain that the list can be adinfinitum:

1. President Barrack Obama’s evaluation from a Judean-Catholic Republican Tea Party White male gung-ho evangelical Christian Apostolic Protestant Baptist Preacher.
2. Being Black and just released from prison after severing a 10 year sentence for something you didn’t do and now you have to find a job.
3. You are a resident of the state of Florida, South Carolina, Ohio, Arizona or Texas and you’re are African American or Hispanic (or you look like you could be) and you get stopped in the ‘WRONG’ neighborhood walking with an ice tea and a bag of skittles by the police or a wanna-be-police faking as a rent a cop.
4. Let’s just say for the sake of saying, you live in the affore mentioned states and you are a non-white and you try to vote without a green card, birth certificate, driver’s license, high school diploma, rent receipt, phone or utility bill, social security card, yours and your parents and your shot record.
5. You are poor and homeless, you find yourself in the hospital and before you are well they kick you out while you are still bandaged up and feverish. They tell you there is nothing else they can do because you don’t have insurance and we don’t have indigent care.
6. You are sick and you have been on drugs for a while and your family disowns you. You’ve been clean for a minute and realize that you are sick and you need your family. At this point they turn their backs on you.

One that is concerned and has a heart of love and compassion would, you would think, try to shelter others in harms way of a dog’s release. Yet the unsympathetic, for whatever ill-intent, has a dying heart.

“If I should see one caught in the rains of a stormy life, Lord I pray for the strength to be able to assist some way some how to help belabor the strife. — Bobby R. Henry, Sr.