All my life I have made excuses whenever I’ve run into a person who said rude or hurtful things to me or someone I loved. Whenever someone acted mean-spirited, I would put together an entire backstory, complete with the terrible treatment they might have had in their lives so that I could feel sympathy for them.
This I did faithfully for as long as I can remember – until this morning. That’s when I found a pile of dog shit on my lawn.
Suddenly I hate everybody and don’t care how tough their childhood was.
I Don’t Have a Dog…and Dog Shit is Why
Many times over the years I have considered getting a dog. I have even researched various breeds to see which one would be best for me. This would be the Papillion: a small dog with a big brain and apparently a clown in the dog world. I imagine how much fun it would be to teach a dog to run through a maze at breakneck speed or to fetch a ball. I think about how comforting it might be to have a little dog by my side whenever I was out in the yard or out on a walk.
But then I remember the poop and the dream is over. The reality is: dogs poop. A lot.
I have witnessed the selfishness of dog owners who seem to have a complete disregard for the feelings, comfort, or property of other people time and again. Not all dog owners, of course, but a good majority who walk through my neighbourhood.
The amount of dog poop beside any nature trail in our city and even on the trail is gag-worthy on a normal day let alone a hot day. Most of the trail users seem to be oblivious to the mess left behind by their dogs or pretend that “one more poop” is no big deal.
This is what I like to call, “Burying your head in the poop bag” behaviour.
How they have the nerve to look me in the eye as they pass by, loose shit-hound by their side, I don’t know. I wonder how they’d feel if I dropped my shorts and crapped on the trail in front of them and then turned and smiled up at them?
Who’s laughing now, eh?!
The Dog Next Door
The next door neighbour’s tenant has a dog, even though there is no backyard at all and a very small, non-fenced front yard. I want to keep this tenant happy as he does not throw all his possessions out on the lawn randomly or have people over who case out my house like the last guy.
So I am determined to like this dog even though she poops. She pees. And her pee burns the lawn very, very badly.
The neighbour is more caring than most. He’d come over every few days and gamely pick up the poop from my lawn. I knew he was trying but the truth is – you simply cannot pick up all the poo. There is residue!
Picking up several piles of crap from a dog that wasn’t mine before I mowed made me grouchy. I was unable to walk on my own lawn in bare feet and worse, had to watch the dog doing her business several times a day through my front window. I guess, like Jason Bourne, she feels safest with her back to the house.
Finally I came up with a solution and put up a fence, giving one third of my front yard over to the neighbours so the dog would have a bigger area to roam.
Whose Dog is it, Anyway?
Today’s poop on my lawn is not from my neighbours’ dog. Sadly, I know her poop. But whoever’s dog did it, they must have watched as their dog headed over to my yard. It would have had to either jump over the front flower bed I created street-side or come up my driveway and through to my lawn that way. This means they allowed the dog to shit at my house.
Then they turned away rather than coming over to clean up the mess.
Here, Boy!
It is even more disheartening because I have left one side of my driveway au naturel (i.e. weedy mess) for dogs to crap on as I am one of two people that still has a lawn in my neighbourhood.
Everyone else has rocks. Or concrete. Or both.
Back in the Stone Age
Like the Flintstones, my ex and I followed the rules around men’s jobs and women’s duties. He was the lawn guru. (He was also the bar-b-q’er and the car maintenance dude.)
We fought over our lawn constantly because he wanted everyone to admire a perfect, weed free, dark green clipped and tidy aspect. I wanted no poison anywhere near my home.
I get why he felt the way he did now. The entire world judges you on how you keep your lawn. It was all on him back then.
We compromised and I dug dandelions on every lawn we had for over twenty years. Hours and hours on my hands and knees, digging every weekend throughout spring so that I could avoid poisonous weed killer. The great thing about this was that I aerated every lawn we had by hand. I’d put some composted sheep poop on after I was done and voila! A beautiful kelly green lawn. Far more beautiful than the dusky dark green of the lawns sprayed by the commercial companies.
For the record, composted sheep poop does not smell too bad, unlike dog poop-ey.
Lawn Apologies
Now the lawn is my sole responsibility and I look after it as I want; however, there is so much riding on that patch of green in front of my house that my nerves are nearly shot when anything happens out there.
It’s not just wanting to avoid being that neighbour that brings down property values up and down the street. My ego is involved. I am horrified that anyone will think I can’t look after this place by myself. I am out to prove the world wrong. My front lawn is proof that I am together, solid, in control…
I water and weed more than I should.
Grow a Pair!
My envy is not anyone else’s green lawn, though, it’s the single guy’s next door.
Scott doesn’t give a crap, pun intended. His lawn looks like hell. I mean, really bad. The only part that looks halfway decent is the part I gave to him because I still water it.
When he first moved in, he rented his basement suite out to a crackhead. They fought constantly. One day I watched the tenant, who told me he had worked in landscaping, take a bottle of Roundup and pour it around the yard.
Weeks later I looked out from my upper bedroom window and saw a HUGE yellow cock and balls on the front lawn. You can still see the outline two years later but to fully appreciate it you’ve got to look down from above. Kind of like a crop circle, I guess.
Grrrrr
It took a pile of crap right in front of my picture window to show me the bigger picture: most people are jerks.
There is a guy who comes into the store where I work who happens to know a few people I know. We have talked about our anger over vaccination mandates and I thought we were on the same page. I was happy to have this small connection with another human being and even fantasized that maybe he saw me as more than just a shop girl.
In these daydreams, he would ask me out for coffee and we would compare notes about what we’d learned over the course of the pandemic and maybe have a few laughs.
Get Your Shit Together, Man!
One of my coworkers saw him come in the other day and she told me that she would no longer serve him. I guess he’d come in after Roe vs. Wade was overturned and told her that it was about time abortion was banned. Oh, no.
I served him that day as the dutiful and conscientious employee I am. But I felt betrayed. How could he be so angry about the government forcing him to have something injected into his body yet be gleeful when they can now force others to carry a pregnancy to term?
I guess because he’s safe in the knowledge that it will never happen to him. As a woman, this is a personal violation of the deepest magnitude. A 10 on the Richter scale.
Xi Whiz!
So this guy is just another in a long line of authoritarian people trying to tell me what I can or cannot wear or do or learn or be.
This fear of being violated has made me not only wary but downright distrustful. I see danger everywhere. The Matrix is onto me and I am watching Bruce Lee videos to try to pick up a few moves.
I Break With Thee
I want to set that dogshit on fire and Malatov it overhand right onto someone’s front steps and then scream with laughter as they come out in a panic.
I want to tell that guy that comes into the store that, by the way, there’s no way in hell I’d ever go out for coffee with him. You know, just in case he was thinkin’ it.
I want to break up with society and throw dog poopey on everyone’s shoes.
Life has beaten me up, kicked me in the teeth, and shit on my lawn.
Me
Is it any wonder I’ve been taking myself – and life – too seriously? The world is careening wildly towards world war and financial meltdown, on top of worsening “natural” disasters, all while being even more divisive.
No wonder I’m scared to date anyone. I’d have to figure out whether a man is for all bodily autonomy or just their own before committing to even a coffee. Otherwise, I’d be burning my tongue trying to drink the coffee and get out of there as fast as possible.
But I’m Nothing Special!
They say wisdom or inspiration can come from the most unlikely of sources. A face on a tortilla or a former neighbour’s lawn art, for example. Rodney Norman is that unlikely source for me.
If you look at any of your Social feeds, you see everyone is competing to be the loudest, most shocking, and divisive out there. A popularity contest to the bottom, I guess. Mine is no different so I try to balance some of the serious with some random things.
Does anyone remember the self-deprecation of Dangerfield or the genius of Foster Brooks? Old Carol Burnett and Johnny Carson clips are great to pull out of any hideous funks. I think that’s how Rodney Norman came up on my feed.
I clicked on one of Rodney’s videos because it was short. I can handle nearly anyone for one minute.
There was no slick title or production and he’d obviously forgotten to comb his hair.
He looks like a cross between a dishevelled Tschaikovsky and the “It’s” man from Monty Python. Once you get into the way he speaks, you realize he makes a helluva lot of sense.
Roll Out the Barrel
He even recommends watching someone play accordion to cheer yourself up. Now I am a fan of accordion music and not just the Shmenges Brothers. I have often thought that it was impossible to be sad listening to either the accordion or banjo. Both? You don’t stand a chance.
As a Canadian I am still pissed at the Grammy’s for discontinuing the Polka category and believe it was a conspiracy against Walter Ostanek.
Are You Happy Now?
I am always amazed at the direction my blog posts go. Yesterday I wrote a rant that I am laughing at today, thanks to Walter and Rodney.
Reading Rodney Norman’s blog, I am ashamed of myself for wallowing in so much self-pity on mine. And now that I’ve cleaned up the dog poop I am wondering, “What was the big deal again?”
All I know is that I am certain that this is the kind of guy I’d go out for coffee with.
Even if he had a dog.
