The Dog Says How by Kevin Kling Page A

later his wife finds it hidden under the bed. She looks in it and sees a woman. Obviously, the woman thinks her husband is having an affair with another woman in town. This woman looks just like the kind of hussy her husband would fall for, too. A huge fight breaks out and a frying pan is involved and finally the husband and wife discover the mirror is a looking glass. Ahhh, now they’re in love again and she gets a bag of ice for his head.
    Mirrors are deceiving. When it comes right down to it, we don’t believe what we see; rather, we see what we believe . Just like the couple in the folktale, we see what we want to see. Sometimes you look in the mirror and think, “Oh no! I look like that?” But when you look in a mirror and your love looks over and says, “You’re hot,” you’re hot. And it’s true . . . you are hot. Same mirror.
    One time I was in New York. I walked out onto the street and saw a bike messenger run into a woman. He was going pretty fast and she was screaming, “Get away, get away!” I saw the whole thing and, even though she was hit hard, I thought she took the blow pretty well and would be OK. I calmly approached her and she stopped screaming. I said I’d seen the whole thing and she’d be fine. “Lay still and the ambulance will be here,” I told her. She said thank you and calmly waited. People were looking at me with appreciation. And I was thinking just approach a situation calmly and everything will be fine. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I looked down and noticed I was wearing a blue hospital shirt, a top scrub like doctors wear that I’d bought at a thrift store. That poor woman thought I was a doctor. Oh well. It worked.
    AT MY BROTHER’S wedding there was a waltz playing and I knew that my grandmother wanted to dance. “Grandmother, would you like to dance?” I asked.
    We got up and we started to move and I’m doing a terrible job. But then I remembered something my Uncle Johnny taught me. Uncle Johnny, the best dancer in our family, used to say, “Cinch ’em in, Kev. Just cinch ’em in.” So I cinched Grandmother in and we got smoother and smoother and pretty soon we were moving pretty good. I was dancing for the first time in my life. With my grandmother! I wanted to see that look in her eye, you know, that look that says, “We’re really cutting up the rug.” So I glanced over to get that look but her eyes were closed and she was smiling. I don’t know who she was dancing with, but it sure wasn’t me.
    PERCEPTION, deception, refraction, distraction.
    We see it when we believe it.
    We are all so worried about being deceived. Take a day off. Stand in front of a mirror and have your loved one tell you how great you look. Believe me, you look hot.

australia
    I’m in Perth, Australia. I’m as far away from Minnesota as you can get and still be on dry land. I’m there watching the America’s Cup, a boat race where Dennis Connor, the American, is trying to win back the trophy he lost to the Australians four years ago. I love this sport because it happens so far out in the ocean you can’t see it, so you stay in the bar and drink until someone comes in and tells you who won.
    This event, like all good hosts, doesn’t interfere with the party. And Perth is wild—“Waltzing Matilda” twenty-four hours a day, pubs packed with tourists. There is this woman standing on top of a cigarette machine, waving a large American flag, and as she passes the flag over the Australians’ heads, they try to light it with their Bic lighters. But it won’t burn. They can’t get it to burn.
    After this race I ask the Australians, “What’s fun to do here? What’s fun in Australia?”
    “You’ve got to see the rock, mate. You’ve got to climb the rock. You haven’t been to Australia until you’ve climbed Ayers Rock.”
    So the next morning I get on a jet and fly to the middle of the great arid continent of Australia, and I get off at Alice Springs. Then I get on