Listen up:  I was lying in bed and feeling so melancholy; sorrowful music floating around the room and right into my head.  (Is there any way to escape being me?  Is this what I will feel like for the rest of my life?)  Scruff curled up beside me and sighed, and instead of feeling comforted, I only felt that he too was very sad and here we were- the saddest creatures in the world, alone and together, and we couldn't speak with words.

"Get up, Scruff!" I dragged myself out of bed.  I found my shoes and we went outside.  The weather was turning cool and breezy.  We walked along the bike path and sat in some grass (it was so green it must have been photoshopped) and watched the sun reflect and shimmer off of the stream.  Suddenly everything I saw was beautiful and wonderful and amazing and perfectly imperfect all at once.

A woman riding her bike past stopped to pick something up.  She held it out to me and said, "I found a turtle."  There was urgency and worry in her voice.  "Do you want to see?" she asked as she held the turtle up for me to inspect.  Sternly, she informed me, "He is going right back to the water!  He can't just sit on the curb- he'll get hurt!  Back to the water! Back to the water!"  She scolded that turtle all the way back to the stream, and I loved her.

We headed back towards home.  A guy was approaching us on the path.  He looked kind of suspicious; he was staring right at me and somehow shuffling tensely.  Scruff paused and seemed suspicious of him too.  The guy got closer. "Is he friendly?" he asked, leaning down to Scruffy.

"Yeah, he loves everybody." I told him, relaxing.  Something about the way he pronounced his words made me trust him.  "His name is Scruffy."

"What a perfect name for him- he is so scruffy!" he told me and soon we were crouching down and laughing together on the bike path at Scruffy as he threw his dogbutt around like crazy, and I loved this guy.

Everything was perfect.