(**)It Happens.....

 This afternoon, I started down the street for a walk, going east on our street on my regular route.  I thought I'd take advantage of the beautiful weather and maybe work off a little of that big lunch I had eaten earlier.  It was 75 degrees here today and cloudy, so it was perfect for such an excursion.   I was walking along past a house I've passed a thousand times when I noticed something I hadn't seen before.

There was a sign on the house's fence.  It said, "IF YOUR DOG POOPS PLEASE SCOOP."

Well, I laughed out loud.  For one thing, it was so totally unexpected.  When I first spotted the sign, I couldn't tell what it said, so I figured it was probably "BEWARE OF DOG"  or something like that.  But, no, this message was completely different.  I appreciated the little hint of humor, sort of a limerick with a message, since it kind of rhymes.  Also, ever the grammarian, I was glad to see there weren't any superfluous apostrophes, as in "IF YOUR DOG POOP'S PLEASE SCOOP."  That would have ruined it for me.  (Personally, I would have added a comma after "POOPS"  but I recognize that a comma is optional in this case and may have incurred an extra expense with the sign-maker. )

But more than that, the message on the sign immediately struck me as a metaphor for lots of interactions between people.   We often use "poop," or something more graphic (think Bovine Scatology), to represent negative stuff in our lives.   If you remember in the movie Forrest Gump, when Forrest was on his long run, some reporter asked him what he thought about something negative that had happened to him.  Forrest replied in his own distinctive intonation, "It happens."

It happens.  Poop happens. Sometimes there is dog poop in your yard.  Sometimes for real, and sometimes only metaphorically.

Sometimes the dog poop (either real or metaphorical) in your yard is just there, and there is no one you can blame for it.  As Forrest said, it just happens.  This might be because a band of wild dingoes (either real or metaphorical) invaded your neighborhood and chose your yard as a substitute for a Porta-Potty.  Or maybe there was a bad storm and a tree fell on your house.  Who you gonna blame, the tree?

Other times, there is someone to blame. Those you can blame come in two types.  (I have thought a lot about this, so you can trust me on it.)

One of the reasons that sign on the fence made me laugh is because it reminded me of (literal) dog-poop issues I experience at our previous house, which had a large corner lot with lots of space for neighborhood dogs to leave little presents for me to clean up.  Lots of little presents.  Some not so little.  So when I saw that sign, I immediately commiserated with the owner of that house.  I also wished that I had handled those issues more like he did, with a gentle reminder and a little humor.  More often I just fumed and raged.

As I said, our previous home had a large lot.  There was a long stretch of it that ran perpendicular to the front of the house and included one side of the privacy fence that surrounded our backyard.  From part of this stretch you could not even see the front of the house, and I could not see people allowing their dogs to fertilize it for me.   I knew they did, though, because I spent lots of time cleaning that stuff up.

One day, as I was driving home, I caught one of them in the act.  A lady I did not know, but whom I had seen around the neighborhood walking her little Yorkie (or some such critter), was standing and watching her doggie do his business on that stretch of my yard.   I slowed down, rolled down my car window, and as calmly as I could, said, "That is my yard.  You are using my yard as a dog-run.  I'm going to have to clean that up."

Well, this lady was immediately mortified.  She looked at my house, where I had pointed, and I could see that she had never even thought that this piece of ground that her dog was defiling belonged to somebody.  She sputtered sincere apologies.  She promised that she would send her husband down to "clean up this mess," and that it would never happen again.

I was really glad that I had not been rude to that lady.   She was a nice lady.  She was one of the first type of people who bring poop into your yard, or into your life.  These people do not mean to harm, they don't realize they are hurting anybody.   They are in their own little world and they just don't think about how what their actions affect you.  If I had had a "POOP, PLEASE SCOOP" sign like my current neighbor down the street, this lady would have  adhered to it.  As a matter of fact, her husband did come and clean up after the Yorkie (I guess he was in charge of such things in their household), and she went so far as to leave a note in our mailbox apologizing in writing.   I always waved to her when I saw her after that.

Another battle in the Poop Wars I fought at that house involved a representative of the other type of people who bring crap into your life.   There was another dog-walking woman in our neighborhood, whom I had observed more than once allowing her monster-dog to drop big steaming piles in other people's yards. In their front yards.  This woman could not claim ignorance like the lady with the Yorkie. Oh, no.  She was brazen.  She marched her dog around the neighborhood, letting crap drop where it would and never stooping to scoop.  She, like others of her type, know what they are doing to you and they just don't care.

I am a little ashamed (and a little proud) to describe what I did the day I found one of her brute's mounds in my front yard by the mailbox.  I got in my car and drove around the neighborhood until I found her and her beast, and I confronted her.  I told her I knew what she and her dog had done, and that the next time it happened I would shovel that stuff up and deposit it on her front porch.  She tried to deny the dirty deed, but I told her that I had examined just such a pile I had seen her dog deposit in my next-door neighbor's yard, and I knew that brand of doggie-doo when I saw it.  She never admitted anything, or apologized, but I didn't receive any more of those packages from Brutus.  (She also didn't know that I had no clue where she lived.)

So, anyway, that sign I saw this afternoon on my neighbor's fence reminded me of the Poop Wars, and it reminded me that sometimes people mess you over without meaning to.  I think it is best to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever you can.  Sometimes that idiot that pulls out in front of you in traffic just didn't see you, or is preoccupied with something.   I believe that most people are like the lady with the Yorkie, rather than that other woman.  And although I accomplished what I set out to when I confronted the crap-on-your-neighbor woman, I paid an emotional price by getting a bit overwrought.  It is better, whenever possible, to just remember that "it happens" and try to keep smiling.