The Worst Dog Walk in the World

Mrs. Apron and I are really doing our best to try to be good neighbors.

We want to fit in.

We want to be liked, or at least, not scowled at.

We accept that these are lofty aspirations, and that they, frankly, may or many not be achieved with any degree of alacrity.

We are different. I'll bet you're tired of hearing people say that, but, we are.

We walk each other to the car in the morning, and hug and kiss goodbye-- not like in Casablanca, but in the cute way that probably makes people watching from their windows vomit into their flower-boxes. We blast Gilbert & Sullivan operettas through the auxiliary speakers of the computer, favor clothing from decades (her) or centuries (me) gone by, and exhibit other abberant behaviors.

We tend to use salty language in the course of everyday conversation which, I guess, is mostly my fucking fault. Yesterday, Mrs. Apron and I were taking a nice walk in the park, and we were discussing her day.

"And it's like, I'm supposed to be doing therapy with these kids, or some fucking shit," Mrs. Apron said, as a slightly bemused young mother and her three-year-old daughter passed us. Oh well, guess we won't be having them over for cocktails.

One of the things you have to be judicious about when you've moved into a new neighborhood is your dog walking procedures and habits. It's not as simple as just brown-bagging it, polite dog-walking is a science. Or an art.

Or a scart.

In any event, it's challenging and, if you don't get it right, you could be the one everybody talks about, clicking their tongues, leaving you nasty, anonymous notes written on napkins, shoved under your windshield-wiper. You could be "THE BAD NEIGHBOR" which sounds like a terrible movie and, if it isn't already, it should be one.

I was telling Mrs. Apron about a dog-walk that I was on just a couple days ago in our new neighborhood. I was chatting away with this thick, blonde, mascara-wearing woman who lives on the corner of the next street over, as her two dachsunds were yapping their little, brown heads off. We were doing the neighborly thing-- exchanging small talk, pretending we were enjoying ourselves, talking about how great the neighborhood is, complimenting each other's dogs.... when mine took a heaping, steaming shit, right on her lawn.

I stared at it for a couple seconds before pulling out the plastic bag from my pocket.

"Oh, that's okay," she said, in response to my color-drained face.

After recounting this incident to Mrs. Apron, she said,

"It's funny, but when I was walking Finley, I was thinking about what would be the worst dog walk in the world-- you know, like you walk the dog and he takes a big shit, and you reach for a plastic bag and you realize that you don't have one on you, and you look up and a neighbor is watching you from the little window in her door-- what do you do?"

Hmpf, I thought. What do you do?

Do you...

1.) Look up at the neighbor, smile, & wave?

2.) Look up at the neighbor, smile, & give her the finger?

3.) Pick up the shit with your bare hands, smear it in your face like war-paint, pop your
eyes, and start screaming like an Arab?

4.) Start screaming at the dog?

5.) Clutch your chest and fake a heart attack/endocarditis?

6.) Clutch your head and fake a stroke/aneurysm?

7.) Kick snow over the shit? (If no snow is present, just rub your foot around on it, pretending that there's snow.)

8.) Run home, put the house up for sale, book a flight to Argentina, enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program, pour gasoline all over the car and light it on fire, incinerate all personal documents and I.D. cards, change your name, get radical, facial reconstructive surgery and gender-reassignment surgery and live for the next 38 years as a Jesuit missionary?

9.) Start to cry?

10.) Pretend that your male dog is a female and that it was just urinating?

11.) Close your eyes and pray that God will make the shit disappear because if he can make fucking bushes burn he can certainly make a sloppy pile of dog shit disappear, if he really wanted to. I mean, seriously, we haven't seen a real, hardcore miracle since dinosaurs roamed the earth-- where's that dude been all my life?