Getting acquainted, Maine style

Some people talk a mile a minute, jabbering away so fast and so endlessly that simply listening to them is exhausting. Fortunately, I live in Maine, where there are plenty of people who reveal themselves slowly (if at all) over an extended period of time, as if speaking for more than a few seconds would be pushing it.

The thinking seems to be that silence is a glorious thing and damn hard to improve upon, so you'd better not waste any more words than you have to while messing with it.

Hence my little tale.

As I walked along our local riverside trail a few days ago, a small, white dog - some sort of terrier, I would guess - approached me from the opposite direction. Trailing behind him was a middle-aged man carrying a leash. I bent down to pet the dog, whose owner eventually caught up with the pooch.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning,” came the terse but not unfriendly reply that is so common here in Maine. (Why waste two words when one conveys the same message?)

The next day, the situation repeated itself. The loose dog, who had been running back and forth while his owner trudged along, came up to me again. So I gave him a pat or two until his owner got within earshot.

“He must sleep well once he gets home, after all that exercise,” I said.

“I’ll be the one doing the sleeping,” came the reply.

It was déjà vu the next day as well. The dog ran up and down the trail. The man walked slowly toward me. Then the dog ran up to me to say hello.

“Morning,” I said to the dog’s owner once he reached me.

“Morning,” he replied, without stopping or even slowing his pace.

We continued on our separate ways. As the distance between us widened, the dog owner, who was now several yards behind me and headed in the opposite direction, added a postscript:

“His name is Jake.”