Boredom and border collies.

As touched upon during last year's period of unemployment, spending quality time with Hurley the Golden Retriever is one of the funner parts of being home all day. The dog, for his part, is ecstatic about the whole thing -- for the first week, he kept looking up at me with ears perked and tongue lolling crazily from the side of his mouth, like, "You're still here? You're here all day?! You're here all day every day??? OH MY GOD YES!"

But, and this is probably more important, Hurley is the one thing that consistently gets me out of the house each day. Because, y'know, he needs to pee... and I need to interact with other human beings, lest I completely lose the ability to act like a normal, functional adult. (Yes, this actually happens. QUICKLY. The other day, after a week or so of spending my days completely by myself, I ran into an old friend on the street and realized midway through our conversation that I was talking at approximately 1,000 miles per hour.)

So early yesterday, I took the dog for his usual walk, allowing strangers to stop and pet him, chatting about the weather, wandering up and down the streets of my neighborhood. We met a group of little kids on their way to school. We crossed the street just in front of a moving truck and waved to the man behind the wheel. We stopped to say hello to Hurley's biggest fan, a woman known to me only as The Crossing Guard with the 80s Bangs.

A half-hour later, we were on our way back to the apartment when I suddenly heard a voice to the left of me calling, "Excuse me! Excuse me, miss?"

I turned to look -- it was the driver of the moving truck, pulled up to the side of the road, smiling and waving out the window.

"Miss! Excuse me!"
I stopped next to the truck. "Yes?"
"What sort of dog is that?"
"This?" I said, pointing at Hurley. "This is a golden retriever."
"Yeah, okay!" the guy said, nodding. I turned to go, but he pointed at the dog.
"Hang on," he said. "So Lassie was a golden retriever too, right?"

I thought for a minute.
"Er... no. Lassie was a collie."

From inside the truck, there came a sudden shriek of man-laughter. Another guy appeared in the window, shaking with mirth and pointing derisively at his friend, and shouted, "I knew it! I knew it!"

"Dammit," moaned the driver, looking totally disappointed.
The other guy, still cackling, gave me a double thumbs-up.
"Haha!" he shouted. "I just won lunch!"

And maybe it's just because the bar is set sort of low these days, but this totally made my week. Partly, it's because I rarely get to talk to people anymore. But mostly, it's because the time difference between when I waved to the guy in the moving truck vs. when he stopped to ask me about the dog means that he and his burly friend had been arguing.
About Lassie.
For twenty-five minutes.