TheBanyanTree: Saturday stories

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Monday is not Saturday, but then, Julie made me do it.

Lissen sweet stuff,

	Okay. Yeah, but did you go back, you know in the darkest of night, stealthily, probably wearing a ski mask, and retrieve said poop?  This would have been the responsible thing for even an abnormal person, such as yourself, to do. Good citizenry will repair the rifts in this country. You can play your part!  

	But there would be such rewards, I mean other than saving the country.  By that time, the excrement in question may have been frozen solid and wouldn’t even need a poop bag. Pick up that frozen turd with your clean bare hands and transfer not a microbe to your skin!  My suggestion, since there was such legitimate mirth to be had from the whole charade parade, would be then to have the dog log bronzed at some local trophy shop and mounted on your mantle. Think of the lively conversations you can have with curious guests who bother looking at things you put on your mantle.  If your typical guests don’t look at the trophies (and chatchkas) you put on your mantle, then stash the bronzed legend in your medicine chest.  When your guests repair to the restroom, you can be silent until you hear the …… CLANK.

	Such mirth. See? We can find joy in so many unexpected places! There should never be a dearth of mirth.

Thank your dog for us,

	Oh great provider,


Tobie





> On Jan 20, 2020, at 9:42 AM, Teague, Julie Anna <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:
> 
> (Mo-om, Tobie started it!)
> 
> Mostly my Saturdays are pretty normal: coffee, farmer’s market, clean the house, walk the dog. Last Saturday, though, one event stands out because it was something I’d never before done, not in my whole life. Exciting, right!? Never before! See, I was walking the dog—she doesn’t walk, she runs, so this has become my exercise regimen—and we’d been zigzagging around the big park near our home for twenty minutes, running from tree to tree, looking for squirrels and looking a bit deranged to anyone watching. It was very cold, and so we needed to cut the hunt short and get home. I’d realized at some point that I’d failed to bring a poop bag. I am very conscientious and always pick up her poop, even though sometimes I have to hunt hard for it—Tansy is a five pound streak of fur, tongue, and attitude in a teeny tiny puffer coat. But we’d been running around the park long enough that I figured I’d dodged a bullet on the poop front. As we walked home, however, she did decide to poop, and not just anywhere—she stooped to poop in the front yard of the woman with whom we’ve been doing some dog training. (“Dog training” is a euphemistic term for what has been going on with this cocky little Yorkie wind-up toy.)  Not only that, but the lights were on and the front curtains were open, and I imagined Miss Jillian was probably looking out her window, watching Tansy poop in her yard. No poop bag, as I mentioned, so I was mortified. I couldn’t just walk away.  I couldn’t. It’s a cowardly and unneighborly act to leave one’s poop in someone’s yard, especially if you are being observed, which I felt sure we were. I had to think, and I had to think quickly and this is what I came up with—I mimed the act of picking up dog poop. Pulling something out of my pocket in a balled up hand, my back angled to the window. Bending over to look for the (tiny, nearly non-existent) poop. Making the sweeping motion of picking up a turd, tying a bag, and quickly walking away. 
> 
> It wasn’t my best moment. When my friend Leanna came over that night and asked how my day had gone, I couldn’t resist telling her.  She laughed uproariously and so then, of course, we had to physically mime the act in the most dramatic way possible, including the old mime-describing-a-wall shtick. I mean, we were laughing hard.  When I realized this incident could be mined for humor, of course I told my mom the story the next day. She laughed even harder than Leanna. She, too, has a small dog that poops and could relate only too well to the mix of emotions I had experienced in the moment.
> 
> And now I’m telling you, because in the end, it was damn funny, and because a more normal person might not have gone through with such a ridiculous charade, but I’ve never been accused of being normal.  And because that was the highlight of my Saturday. 
> 
> Julie
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> 
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"Perfection is an illusion."
Meyshe Benyomen Shapiro-Nygren



Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>