Hang on a minute — the dogs are trying to tell me something

I read an article the other day that suggests that people who isolate tend to get lonely and that the lonelier you are the more likely you are to “create social connections by anthropomorphizing nearby gadgets, such as computers or cars, pets, or by believing in supernatural events or religious figures.”

Where do I, a human that spends a tremendous amount of time alone, begin deconstructing all of this? There’s so much to tell! First of all, dogs are not “gadgets.” Second of all, I’m not anthropomorphizing them, they really do understand me, people!

And yet, based on the findings in the article, I suppose my existence counts as some sort of “evidence” just because I consider my pooches not possessions but roommates, have given them all both names and nicknames, insist that they sleep in my bed, knit clothes for them, and tell them their favorite stories every night before bedtime.

Wait, you mean to tell me all animals don’t live like this?

And I suppose the “experts” might also chalk up my deep belief in synchronicity to the fact that, until LaunchPad Coworking opens anyway, I remain isolated most of the time. Because apparently some folks think of synchronicity as superstitious.

But check this: Two days ago I read this aforementioned article. Then, the very next night, I go to see Frontera Fest’s short fringe at the Hyde Park Theatre. And right there, in the second act, is a mini-play about a woman working at home alone and anthropomorphizing! Please — like that’s a coincidence. Yeah, right.

In this play, the protagonist keeps two sock puppets as her office mates and, when they aren’t singing duets to her or urging her to call her mother, she has conversations with a light-up plastic Baby Jesus she keeps on her wall.

The rest of the audience laughed at all this, as if it were absurd. For me, it looked so much like a scene out of my own daily adventures — except my sock puppets prefer singing Elvis Costello over Lionel Richie tunes and Buddha is the one who chats me up at lunch— and I wondered, “Where’s the escape? Where’s the element of fiction here?”

Now really, tell me, do you think I’m being driven to draw bizarre conclusions and form odd theories because I spend so much time alone? Or do I have something here—do seemingly disparate pieces of my life actually line up like cheerful, chatty ants on their way to a pile of sugar? (If you won’t answer these questions, I have at least two dogs and a talking statue of St. Francis that will.)

I did like how the article owned up to an important truth: “Owning pets and religious beliefs and practices are both known to increase a person’s sense of well-being, but why exactly that is isn’t well known.”

Duh, I can answer that one. Because talking to God and Dog (whoa, check that: it’s really the same word just spelled different!) is a much better use of assigning human characteristics to the non-human than, say, trying to animate that date you found on Match.com, you know, the dullard that makes a singing sock puppet shine by comparison.