Once he chewed a brick of cheese, but cheddar doesn’t have a little face, so this is better.

The dog did this.

I’m not sure what exactly this guy was before he became a canine taste sensation, but now he’s a metaphor. I am the little bendy baseball-head man, gnawed upon by the surly teeth of daily life, and abandoned in a saliva-coated stupor. The eyes are wary, the hands (powerless without opposable thumbs), outstretched in vain surrender, and the wardrobe is a colorless too-small unitard. And yet, the suggestion of a smile remains.

Because today I am free from other people’s teenagers! At least until August.

Also, I have a brilliantly red candied apple sitting in my refrigerator, a “gift” from my youngest after his all-day trip to Knott’s Berry Farm yesterday. It smells like a giant radioactive Red Hot.

“I bought this for you,” he says, handing me the candied apple wrapped in cellophane. “Here, hold it like this.” He takes the stick out of my hand and rotates the apple slightly.

I take a look around the back side of the apple, and sure enough, there’s a bite taken out of it, the cellophane sucked into the small cavity and glued to small teeth marks with sticky red syrup.

“Oh that! They sell them that way,” he says. “I got it because you are so nice to me!” He opens his eyes wide in sincerity.

“Don’t like cinnamon?” I say.

“No.”

I think that maybe I will feed the dog the candied apple, and then when the red sticky part coats his snout like poorly-applied lipstick, I will take his picture and maybe post it here with a witty caption about Courtney Love and lip waxing.

Or not.