“Doggy” I am one of the lucky few who travels around the streets with a dog and more often than not this well behaved creature walking just to my left attracts some notice by my fellow street walkers. However, just because you see a dog, there is not usually a need to say the word dog, doggy, to shriek, to run over to ask questions, or to whisper under your breath words like beautiful, gorgeous, or breathtaking. (Yes, breathtaking, I’ve heard it!) So before you start thinking I’m crazy or mean, or a host of other things let me tell you a few short stories... Most of them happen to involve Randall,. It is not that Bethany, Bear, or Andy were unattractive but, Randall is blond, or yellow and people can better see his expressive face. Randall story number one: “The Brad Pitt Effect” One morning as we walked through MU’s food court a group of first year girls caught sight of Randall walking through the court. They abruptly abandoned their conversation and shrieked with the kind of ferocity reserved for a mega star like Brad Pitt. This sentiment stuck and every time that we would walk across campus, into a room, or through an event and he would literally cause activity to stop, we called it the Brad Pitt Effect. I cannot even count the mutters of beautiful and gorgeous that I would get with all of my dogs. It prompted my friends to jokingly tell me to thank people as if they were directing their adoration my way. Okay, now let’s talk about “doggy.” I am not certain what it is that makes people regress when they see a dog but, what is it that makes an otherwise relatively normal adult overflow with excitement so that the only word that can escape from their lips is doggy? I am certain that they have seen a dog before and I would bet that a number of them even have a dog of their own. But, doggy, just doggy… It is baffling! A disclaimer is that I do not include children in any of what has proceeded. Kids have their own set of tenants.