The Dog Says How by Kevin Kling
A Master Storyteller Uses Humor as a Survival Technique
With offbeat comic brilliance, National Public Radio commentator Kevin Kling reflects on his life after a near-fatal motorcycle accident.
Minnesota playwright, storyteller and NPR commentator Kevin Kling survived a motorcycle accident in 2001 in downtown Minneapolis. The first story in his autobiographical book, The Dog Says How, describes how he struggled to learn to use voice-recognition software and regain his sense of identity after he found himself partially paralyzed. Throughout the ordeal, his dogs, along with family and friends, helped him avoid self-pity. “When I get depressed,” he says, “I just take a look at our two wiener dogs. You’ll never see more of a can-do attitude—in a more can’t-do body—than a wiener dog.”
Other Dogs
There are other dogs mentioned in this book, too. There is Princess, a Brittany spaniel who has her own spot at a small-town mayor’s table and who waits to eat until after grace is said. And Kling’s beloved mutt Charger, who once ran to the door when the neighbor started his lawn mower, believing that Kling was coming home on his motorcycle, even though he was right next to him on the couch. (“Are we paired with the dog we deserve?” he wonders.)
In “Lightning,” Kling tells how the males in his family are prone to attract lightning. His Uncle Byron, who has “a metal plate in his head from the war,” has been struck several times, in fact. Kling was first hit when he was fourteen and lying in a puddle of water, helping his dad build a Bonanza plane. When he handed his dad a screwdriver, he suddenly felt a lightning bolt shoot through him. (“My stomach hit my liver hit my spleen…”) Not until many years later, on the day of his dad’s funeral, did he learn that other family members shared this unfortunate tendency. (It was on that day, he says drolly, “that I found out I was not adopted.”)
Dog Sledding in the BWCA
“Racing Toward Solace” is perhaps the most inspirational essay in the book. In it, Kling relates his first dog sledding adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a place he considers his spiritual home. Nearly everyone in his Wilderness Inquiry group has some kind of disability. Some are blind. Others have Down syndrome or brain injuries. But the counselors are patient and encourage participants to do as much as they can, and go as far as they can.
With nervousness and anticipation, Kling learns to drive the dog team and experiences a thrill that he hasn’t had since his motorcycle accident, that “flow of body and nature, where my inside self and my outside self are one.” Once again, he shows us how dogs can serve to move us beyond our fears and limitations. “The dogs are magnificent,” he writes. “We are a team, from the powerful wheel dogs in the rear to the lead dogs in front.”
It is not easy to write about life’s difficulties with wisdom and grace. Kevin Kling has done so admirably and artfully. Readers will eagerly await his next collection.
Borealis Books 2007, ISBN 978-0-87351-599-3
