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No, I don’t have a great story about having an ex-pet stuffed.
Fortunately, Alan Alda does.
I’m reading a copy of his book, “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I’ve Learned.” I’m about halfway through it and it’s one of the best collections of memoirs or short stories that I have read in a long long time. His stories about growing up in burlesque shows are my favorite so far.
Occasionally I will read something that I feel is written so well that I can’t stop thinking about the way the author structured their thoughts. Here’s a passage I particularly enjoy:
Although she [Alda's Mother] didn’t say it aloud, “peer groups” sounded to her like people peering at one another. To the priest who answered the phone, the book [The Lonely Crowd], and possibly all of sociology, may have smacked of godless secularism. “We’re [the Catholic Church] concerned about that book, too,” he told her. Neither one of them was fully aware of what the other meant. Two utterly different forms of paranoia had met in the dark and agreed there was something under the bed.
What a great metaphor.
