Andre Under Cover

Ritual – any act always done in a particular situation and in the same way each time.

We all have little rituals that we do in our lives. On Sunday’s we have breakfast, read the Sunday papers, watch the Today Show followed by CBS Sunday Morning. We also wash our bedsheets, and naturally when dried, “make the bed.” Nothing original or unique except the last ritual. The making of the bed you see has become a threesome.

Once the clean sheets are dry, we toss then on the bed where they stay while we finish reading the paper and drinking that last cup of coffee. Meanwhile, our four legged buddy, Andre, saunters into the bedroom and lays down on the still warm sheets where he waits, waits, and waits for us to make the bed.

    It has gotten to the point where we cannot make the bed without Andre’s “help.” The problem is a job that should take no more than five minutes has turned into a fifteen minute marathon. We straighten and smooth the sheet out. Andre, who has moved under the sheet, starts wrestling with it. We straighten it out again and Andre wrestles with it again and again. Of course, we encourage this behavior, because by now my hand is on top of the sheet playfully grabbing at him as he wrestles with both with my hand and the sheet. This goes on for about ten to fifteen minutes before we decide, meaning my wife and I, we have other things to do today beside wrestle with Andre.

It has become a ritual for us. Andre knows it’s Sunday or at least its sheet washing day and he’s always ready for the party.