After thinking about it, I can’t help but wonder if what happened yesterday was partly my fault. In retrospect, I should have known better than to relax. It’s never a good idea to let your guard down, especially when things have been running smooth and quiet for a while. That’s usually when life sneaks up and whomps you a good one upside the head, especially when you live with Bernie bin Laden. He’s been very well behaved lately (for him, at least) and hasn’t committed any outright atrocities since last year. I was dumb enough to let that lull me into a false sense of complacency. And yesterday, I paid for it.

It started out innocuously enough. It was my day off, and I was running errands with Bernie and Linda. I was in the nuts and bolts aisle at the local Home Depot, with the mutts sitting next to me and behaving themselves for a change. Then a lady came around the corner and exclaimed “Puppies!” and knelt down to meet them face to face. That was all the excuse Bernie and Linda needed to rush over and mooch for attention. Linda wagged her tail but quickly lost interest once she realized this new person wasn’t going to give her any food. But unfortunately for the lady (who will henceforth be referred to as “the victim”), Bernie stayed interested.

This lady/victim was not at all unique-looking. Maybe in her mid-thirties, dressed in what looked like casual business wear – pants, a matching jacket, and one of those cotton T-shirts with a wide scoop neck. In short, she wasn’t dressed provocatively. She wasn’t really thin or fat, but was, to put it in a family-friendly way, “ample” in the chest area. Although her shirt wasn’t especially low-cut, the overall volume in that area made for significant cleavage (have you figured out where this is going yet?). And recent good behavior aside, that was more than our little registered sex offender could handle.

He leaned in and gave her a few kisses on the face, which she seemed to enjoy. But then I saw him look down at her chest, cock his head a little like dogs do when they get curious, and then go in for a sniff. He hooked his chin on the top edge of her shirt, which pulled it down a little further and exposed a little more. His victim let out a nervous laugh and said something like, “Uh, yeah, that’s my shirt there.” This was just too much for our hairy little gigolo to resist, and he decided to go in for the kill.

It was one of those moments we’ve all had where everything seems to slow down, and you have that frozen instant where you simultaneously realize that not only is something bad about to happen, but there’s no way you can react in time to prevent it. Bernie didn’t just bury his nose in there or something minor like that. I mean his entire head halfway back to his ears vanished into that cleavage, and he was shoving down hard in order to bury it even further. Within half a second, it got to the point where I could see a good portion of her bra, which was rapidly approaching critical mass thanks to his rummaging around in there.

As with most of Mr. bin Laden’s crimes against humanity, the whole thing took place within a couple of seconds, so there was little time to react. Our victim was caught completely by surprise, and let out a little yelp as she tried to push Bernie’s head back up into the realms of daylight – gently at first, then more forcefully as he resisted and tried to burrow in even deeper. Unfortunately, that only made things even worse. My first impulse was to pull back on his leash and get him out of there, but I realized he’d made his way down to the part where the bra cups were joined in the front, causing a rapid dislodging of what, once again for the sake of family friendliness, we’ll simply refer to as “the left one.” If I’d yanked him back at that point, it would have caused it to pop completely out, which it was already well on its way to doing.

Complete exposure was only averted when, in desperation, she moved her torso down and to the left and gave Bernie’s head a two-handed shove from below. This finally dislodged him, although he immediately tried to go in again for another round of face-licking. I mumbled something lame like, “Sorry, he’s kind of a molester sometimes,” then did that awkward thing where I tried to pretend like nothing was happening as she tried to push “lefty” back into its proper place within the bra. She was also trying to catch her breath after her struggle with Bernie, who was now dancing around her with his tail wagging like a propeller, looking for another spot to shove his nose. She was understandably flustered, but tried to laugh it off and say it was no big deal. I had a pretty good idea of where Bernie would probably try to shove his nose now that she was standing up, and wanted to get out of there before he completely shredded the few remaining scraps of her dignity. So we quickly fled the scene of the crime before Mr. bin Laden could commit another one.

California has a “three strikes” law for felonies, and now Bernie has committed his second one. I shudder to think of what he’ll do for the grand finale.