For the love of Labs

I was tooling around ebay this morning when I should have been working but admit right here and now to the world wide internet that while I may have been sitting at my desk and I may have been on the computer and I did have a phone in my hand, I was not working. I wasn't, okay?

What I was doing was searching for Christmas gift ideas for a particular friend of mine. One thing we have in common is a love for Labrador Retrievers, so I started there. Way too broad, something like 14 kajillion results and that started with a sno-globe described as Real wood looking resin labs nestled in a snowy atmosphere for year-round special memories. Read that again. Where does one begin?

Moving on, I found a quilt (with matching shams) of different scenes with Labrador puppies. To the word, it was horrific. For a moment, I thought about getting it, you know, as a joke. But never have I seen a homelier item priced so high, so I had to rule that out. The next item was socks with Labs all over them, and believe it or not I have that exact pair of socks, but I know there's no way this friend would be caught dead wearing them.

I clicked onward.

At this point, I was jumping around from link to link, obsessed with the oddities I was finding. Somehow, I landed on decals. I liked the one that said, If it's not a Lab, it's just not a dog, [insert here a respectful nod to JustGolden] but is the 13" size really necessary to make the point? I also liked, My lab is smarter than your honor student, but in the case of both labs in mind, friends would laugh us out right out of the city limits if either of us tried to pass that off.

The thing that stopped me in my tracks though was a 2.5' x 3.8' decal that screamed in a sort of in your face font "Labrador Retriever on Board" with menacing bear-like paw prints to each side. A basic enough message but the font and size making it a tad high volume. And right here, buried at the bottom of this post, is the reason why I started writing in the first place. The decal was shown on the back window of an SUV. The vehicle in the photo? A HUMMER. Ladies and gentlemen, let me say right here that Hummers and Labs don't go together, okay? They just don't. That's like lions sleeping with zebras, like loud strolling with soft, like bling courting sophisticated. Labs are old school and Orvis, over-stuffed beds and bellies, rattling snores and enormous paws stretched out by the fire, old trucks and cold air, leather collars with brass tags. They're wagging tails and eager eyes and they are never, ever brazen. Labs are too refined and their breed-representing owners (hopefully) more reserved than to have their presence hollared from the back window of the biggest joke of a gas guzzling, environmental trashing, ego boosting, piece of pecker-extender on the road today.

Ahem.

I suppose it goes without saying that the seasonal thrill deserted me at that, and today was not the day that I found my friend a Christmas present.