Taylor Phillip Willingham

My earliest memory is Buck lunging for my face attempting to kill me. There is no better way to say this; Buck was an asshole. Even though a part of me was grateful to see his dead body on the road a few months later, his horrific behavior is one of the most formative experiences of my young life. He couldn’t care less that I was only a two-year-old child. I made the mistake of looking him in the eye, and everyone told me never to do it. The worst part was my older brother blamed me for Buck’s behavior. “I told you not to look at him,” Mykle said, laughing as I cried in the corner. I was terrified. Buck was only five years old, but he was thick. His shoulders looked like softballs attached to baseball-sized biceps. Every kid in the trailer park knew that you didn’t mess with Buck unless you wanted to get fucked; but I didn’t listen. See, I’m not like normal humans. I will kick against the pricks until I wear out my opposition. When I was in sixth grade, my mom, dad, and three of my siblings left me to be raised by my stepmother. Maybe I should explain that a little better. Shortly after Buck tried to kill me, my mother and father faced bankruptcy and foreclosure of our double-wide trailer. My mother took back her glasses to buy me a birthday present. The bottom of the social order broke her, and she ended up in a psychiatric ward. My father, wifeless and penniless, joined the military to make an extra dollar. Over the next seven years, my three siblings, except for Robert, went to live with my mom. My two older half brothers, Mykle and James, were not my father’s kids but he loved them and tried to help them while our mother tried to put herself together. My father would have raised them, but they felt guilty that they abandoned our mother and went to live with her in Chicago. After my mom’s third husband tried to kill her but shot a police officer instead, they realized they should have just stayed with dad. President George Bush, the first one, made sure that my father spent a few years in the Middle East protecting oil wells for some royal families. That is how my stepmother ended up raising me for about a year. She was a nurse and a fiercely independent woman. She let me do what I wanted to do. When my father returned from Desert Storm, he could see that I could handle my shit and left me alone. But it was Buck that gave me the confidence to take on a shitty upbringing. The moment he ran at me to kill me plays out in slow motion in my mind even today. His face filled with pure anger as he jumped for my face. Right at that moment, God intervened, and Buck’s leash pulled him back, almost breaking his neck. He fell at my feet. Luck and a complete unwillingness to rationally access the risks of my decisions have led me to this point in my life. Buck, thank you! I hope you are in doggy heaven.