Avoiding the Mothership

You roll up to the Dad Joke Olympics. Your first opponent is P.M. Seymour.

I can’t stop thinking about the howling scene in the Zootopia. There’s this trend where people show their dogs the scene and the dogs join in. It’s only barely a minute long but, in a way, that howl is still going. At some point, someone else is going to show the scene to their dog. Perhaps it is intentional. Or maybe, the dog just happened to be in the room while the movie was playing. Either way, the dog will stop and join the howl. It may be taking place at different times in different places, but in that moment, that dog is howling with every dog that howled before it and every dog that will howl after it. It’s an endless chorus of dogs that may not even be here anymore and dogs that may not be here yet sharing a moment of existence together through space and time. And I think that’s lovely.