certainthings

Ellen Degeneres: I try to save dogs and take them to shelters so that their owners can find them. It's because I have dogs, and I know I would be devasated if either ... damn, whare are their names? Oh yeah .... if either Bootsie or Lippy ... no, not Lippy ... Muffin. If either Bootsie or Muffin got lost.

I'll see stray dogs wandering in front of houses and they look so sad. I just feel compelled to do something to rescue them. Sometimes it's hard because they're tied on a leash on someone's front lawn, so you've got to untie it. Or worse, they're behind a fence, so you need wire cutters (which I always have in my car) to get them out. "C'mon, girl. I'll rescue you and find your owner."

Just last week I was driving when I saw this skinny looking stray dog out on the street. So I stopped, got out, and tried to coax the dog into my car so that I could take it to a rescue shelter. All these people were looking at me like I was crazy. Well, I'm kind of used to that that, so I continued, "Here boy, here Scrappy." When I don't know an animal's name, I always assume that it's Scrappy - even though I've never been right.

Then I saw why people were staring at me. It wasn't a dog, it was a coyote (who oddly enough was called Scrappy).

* * *

At 6'4" and 220lbs., the Supernatural star sometimes scares the stray dogs in South Central L.A. that he coaxes off the streets: "It takes me longer to earn a dog's trust because sometimes they see me as a threat."

* * *

Ya'll, they need to team up and 'rescue' dogs together. She'll be there with her wire cutters cutting the fence - rescuing a dog - and he'll be the look out. Sometimes she'll say to him in a sort of snippy voice, 'Why am I always the one who has to cut the fences or untie them?' And he'll sigh, look down at the ground and say, 'Because they see me as a threat.' She'll go back to cutting and mutter, 'Whatever, pretty boy.'

It needs to happen.

We all feel like idiots at one time or another. Even if we feel we're cool 98 percent of the time, that 2 percent doofus is poised to take over our bodies without any warning. It just takes a crack in the sidewalk - one little trip. We feel like fools, turning our back to look at it. "There's a pebble, somebody better put up some orange cones to warn the others. Everbody's gonna trip like I did." Then we look back that one more time to show the pebble who's boss, "Damn pebble, why-I-oughta..."

We do that because we think that people are staring at us, sensing our inadequacy, noting our flaws, mocking our clumsiness. But perhaps, sadly (though, for the purpose of this book, perhaps not - perhaps humorously instead), nobody is noticing. Everybody is too busy worrying that they look like idiots to care about you.

If you think that none of that applies to you, just take a look at your picture in your high school yearbook. Because closer to the surface than you think is that awkward adolescent hoping that people like her and praying that nobody notices how much she hopes that people like her and knowing that if people knew what an idiot she was, they'd never like her. Or maybe not. Maybe you'd just see how funny you looked back then and and have a good laugh. Either way it's worthwhile.

--Ellen Degeneres [My Point ... And I Do Have One]