Horse dog
My other favorite dog story is about our neighbor's Great Dane.
I was probably 11 and coming home by myself after school frequently. But, because it was me, I often forgot my key. This day was one such day. I was busy trying to dig through my bag when this MONSTER of an animal comes galloping across the street straight for me. I drop my bag and frantically pound on my front door hoping someone's home. About that time, horse dog jumps up and squishes me between the screen door and the front door. I couldn't even turn around because of the pressure on my back.
I don't know how long I was there... minutes? days? In any case, the neighbor-with-the-holey-fence finally heeds my loud screaming and runs across the street to fetch "Susie."
"Don't worry, hon. Susie's the sweetest puppy."
Puppy? After glaring at the neighbor who named their huge dog, 'Susie,' I peeled myself off the door and nervously patted Susie's head. In return, Susie leaned down an licked my cheek with her humongous tongue. Ok, so she didn't lean down, but she didn't have to reach up either.
Big dogs
My roommates were telling me about
English Mastiffs last night reminding me of my two favorite large dog stories.
Doberman on Covey Ln.
I don't quite remember how old I was. I think I was probably 6, maybe 7 and my little brother, Stephen, was 3 or 4. As for the story, I remember bits and pieces, but mostly, the story has just been told so many times, I remember how to tell it.
My family took walks around the neighborhood sometimes, and this evening we decided to walk up Covey Ln. It was probably close to dusk, but still light out. It was pretty quiet; nobody was really out in their yards. People were probably eating or watching tv. We were just walking along. Dad was probably pointing out plants or places people needed to repair things. I was probably trying to talk a lot, and Stephen was probably too little to really be with it. Mom was probably keeping us friendly with each other.
Out of nowhere, a doberman the size of me (at the time) comes bounding up unexpectedly barking and growling at us. We hadn't seen it until we were passing the house it came from, so it had probably just come through the gate. It snarls at us and bites my dad on the butt.
Mom instructed Stephen and I to WALK to the corner. I've always had a thing for performing under pressure, and I'm sure I felt very old and in charge talking calmly to Stephen as we walked to the corner. Dad came up soon after. There were bite marks on the jeans (meaning, the dog had bit
hard), but none went through to the skin. Chuckling, Dad said "I'm sure glad I'm wearing my new Levi's!"
Heidi's ball
There was a bowling ball in the back yard yesterday. A smoky colored black 15 pounder with pink swirls and girl sized finger holes. The finger holes were filled with dirt and probably spiders.
I thought it was a rubber ball at first because I couldn't get very close to it behind the little fake fence somebody had previously put up in the back yard. I thought it was the neighbors' because they have kids so I tried to push it to their fence with a stick. I poked at it hard, but it didn't budge. I tried to roll it towards the end of the row, but it only spun in place. I had to climb back through the little row of trees and pick it up. Yes, a bowling ball. With Heidi written in white type-faced letters across the front.
Again
Part 1: Again, how and what for
Again:
The association between 'back' and 'again' are even today quite noticeable. They share a sense of returning to something whether spatial in the case of 'back', or temporal in the caes of 'again'. How the older sense of 'again' as 'back' became the modern sense of 'again' as in repetition of an action can be traced to this semantic extension of a spatial sense to a temporal sense of the meaning. When some person moves 'back' away from a point in space (directly, horizontally), then that person is returning to where they came from. So, the literal sense can be represented with an image of one arrow going ---> over another arrow <---. The connected lines <---> do not work as well either because the repetition of the moving forward and then moving back is not so evident. This double arrow looks like two different points moving away from one another instead of returning or moving back to the starting point. The best image to illustrate this idea of coming back or moving back to where you started could be a circle with an arrow included in the line in either direction. So, this image schema refers to the spatial sense of going away from and moving back to the same spot. The lexical item 'back' refers to the last half of this notion, of returning, but it implies the first half of moving away.
Even when 'again' mean 'back' spatially, it was metaphorically extended to other realms such as emotion. The example from 1440: "He wedde a yonge gentil damiselle to wyfe; and he loviede hir moche, and she hatide him ayene.' imparts the meaning that the young wife is giving hatred back for love with no spatial sense.
The collocations with 'again' are interesting as well. The example from 1200: "Ele cristene man maketh this dai procession from chirche to chirche and eft again.' In this example both the old word meaning 'again' and the word meaning 'back' are used together. This collocation is found today as well. The word meaning 'back' is associated with a repeated motion because in going 'back' you are going from whence you came, a journey.
In modern English the meanings are often used in metaphorical phrases in the same way. For example, these two sentences mean about the same thing: 1. So, you're
back to doing what? 2. So, you're doing that
again.
So, it seems that the word for 'back' was both used in metaphorical situations (at least with emotion) and in situations where it was semantically associated with 'again'. It seems that 'again' meaning to return to something
spatially was extended to mean to return to something
temporally. It could have already been in use in this way metaphorically, and eventually, this metaphorical temporal meaning increased in importance over the spatial meaning. The actual word 'back' was also present in the vocabulary at the same time according to the OED so, for some reason (possibly due to it being a body part), 'back' became preferred for the spatial sense and 'again' became preferred over 'eft'.
