Why you should always stop to pet the dog

**Let me begin by saying the picture in this post has nothing to do with the actual post, I just LOVE the picture and it’s winter so let’s just embrace and rejoice.**

One morning last week I finished my morning loop around the neighborhood with a walk on the pier. When I was leaving, a pug on long leash meandered over to give me a sniff. I looked up and saw his owners sitting on a bench talking, so asked if it was okay to pet their dog.  “HELL YEAH YOU CAN! Mr. Reagan LOVES pets!”

“After Ronald Reagan?”

“YEP! Met him one time at my job and took a picture while he was walking up the stairs. He was so nice he stopped and asked if I needed to take another.”

“Cool story,” I said with a grin.

I didn’t want to upset the cart by saying I’m not really a dog person, so I just kneeled down to give Mr. Reagan a scratch but he jumped on my lap so I was pretty much done.

For the next 45 minutes this guy told me:

• he’s 80 years old
• so is his wife
• they have three daughters
• two are rich, one is REALLY rich; the third is REALLY pretty so it’s sad she never got married but she helps with the groceries so it’s all working out okay
• “all I have to do is tell her: bagels and cream cheese and she shows up with the best!”
• she is SO PRETTY though…
• Reagan is their third pug so they know how to clean out the wrinkles and all that by now
• WORK HARD IN LIFE AND YOU CAN BE RICH
• “once when we were really young and broke I was looking for the nail clippers and found a rolled up pile of dollar bills in her nightstand. $3000!! I CAN GET A NEW CAR I SAID.” Just like a man. “No you can’t, she said. That’s for a house.”  I already love this lady.
• “we bought our first house in a Chinese neighborhood for $16,000. Everyone thought we were NUTS! But they didn’t think we were so nuts when a Chinese diplomat wanted to buy it from us a few years later for triple the price because he only wanted to live in that neighborhood and we were the only white people to approach to sell.”
• “to be honest her parents had to help us fix up the next one so without them we might not have made it into another house because we didn’t have much money because we already had two kids.”
• a bunch of really identifying things about where he worked and what he did and how he retired that I won’t share for obvious reasons and also because what if i get blog famous now that blogs are dead and he or his wife or any of their daughters end up reading here?
• Seriously though, we are rich. Like our house we bought it for 60 grand and now it’s worth $998,000 –  not that I’m appraising it or anything just last year we had to for some reason or another. It has a bunch of bathrooms and our rich daughter has an eye for design. She helped us remodel the bathrooms last year and now the rest of the house is great but honestly, we’d just live in the bathrooms if we could. Wife nods.
• Me to myself: if his house is only $998,000 he does not live at the beach.
• SC all the way! are you an SC fan?! We have season’s tickets, don’t miss a game!
• Wife: FIGHT ON! In the sweetest little voice and with a raised fist. OMG lady can I come live with you? You can teach me how to clean the dog (that is still on my lap).
• Our rich daughter has taken the grandkids to 103 countries. Can you believe that? ONE HUNDRED AND THREE.
• Wife, nodding: I taught her well.
• Me: better than staring into those damn phones.
• Wife: RIGHT?
• I mentored a lot of the guys who worked for me on how to save. A couple of them still call and tell me thanks. You just have to save $10/day. That’s it. Before you know it you have ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Just play by the rules.
• Me to myself: what rules again?
• I mean we are RICH *rolls up his sleeve and flashes his watch* we only wear ROLEX so that tells you something.
• How old are you anyway, 35? You have lots of time left.
• Me: eyeball emoji. Uh, I LOVE YOU GUYS.
• What’s your name anyway? I always see you around here, now we know each other!

This is why I love living at the beach.

People are crazy – even the ones who don’t actually live there.

I can’t wait to go to breakfast with these two.  I wonder if the daughter will bring the bagels?