he dog loves cheese and hates people. I can't say I blame him-the postman has never brought me anything to rival the joy of a triple-crème brie. And yet, this poses a terrible situation for my parents -- middle-class folk who prize niceness above intelligence, excellence, wealth, and general sanity. To them, it's not whether or not you talk to the magic troll under the bed, it's how you treat him that counts. So while my parents take the dog on a daily walk -- or a “W-A-L-T-Z,” as my mother calls it -- the 20 minutes are often a contagion of apologies. “I'm so sorry,” “It's not you, he just hates children,” “Please don't cry. Here, take a 20.” The theory floated for some time was that the dog -- who showed up in my parents' backyard one day, shivering and devoured by fleas (a rather presumptuous gift from my older brother) -- had been brutalized by men, mean nasty men that smelled of beer and Speed Stick. So when my boyfriend came over, the dog growled and snapped at him. And when my parents invited the minister to our house for dinner, the dog snarled and howled in the backyard. My mother, embarrassed at this tactless and irascible child, would write them apology notes, in the voice of the dog: “Dear Mr. So-and-So, I'm sorry I lost my head and tried to bite you. It was wrong.” The letters were not merely acknowledgement of bad behavior but of ethical breaches: It was wrong. Biting is wrong. We should not bite, and I should have known better. And so you can imagine the exasperation of my parents, my kind kind parents, who want nothing more than to smile and wave at strangers, to spread a kind of liberal, pro-gay, unitarian-style Christian love around as if it were oxygen. They finally have a dog. And he hates everything.

Well, everything except cheese. Cheese and snotty tissues, but let's not discuss that. He can smell cheese from across the house, and if the world were full of 6-foot tall blocks of Monterrey Jack -- instead of flesh-and-blood human beings -- he would surely be the happiest dog on the planet. So why this uncommon love of dairy? Using a bit of dimestore psychology, we could infer that cheese must have rescued him from the mean nasty mean who were playing kickball with his scabby noggin. But I just think it's just evidence that cheese is the best food on the planet, you know? A sharp and stinging Stilton, a complex cheddar, a fresh and mild Mozzarella, a robust Parmesan; it's no matter to him. He's a mean dog--but he's no dummy.