Poopslinger

I have terrible aim. This is something that you might as well know about me. Terrible, horrible aim.

It's true when I'm throwing a wad of paper at a trash can, It's true when I'm throwing my skidmarked undies at the hamper, and as Sally will gladly tell you (while kneeling on the bathroom floor and employing a large variety of cleaning products), It's true when I'm aiming my wizzle-stick at the toilet. Lousy, lousy aim. Don't even get me started on my inability to play darts. If I'm holding a dart, the safest place in the world to stand is directly in front of me, because that's the one place that dart ain't ever going.

So fact "a" that you should be keeping in your head, for it is germane to the story I am about to tell you, is that I have lousy aim. Fact "b" for you to hold onto is that I live in a row house, which is an end unit on a corner, and that I have, sticking off the side of the rear of my house, a little tiny useless garage.

"Useless" is probably a bit of an overstatement. It has plenty of uses. It's just that none of those uses includes parking (or for that matter fitting) an actual automobile inside of it. Given that the definition of "garage" is "an outbuilding (or part of a building) for housing automobiles," I'd say that the little room on the back of my house with the cool roll-up door fails utterly to be a garage. Maybe it was built years ago, in a bygone age when cars were, oh... 5 feet wide. If you drove a Mini you could probably get it into my garage, but you certainly couldn't open the doors. You'd have to climb out the windows, "Duke-boy" style, if you ever wanted to actually come inside for an iced tea or something.

We have no idea what possessed one of the previous owners to build a tiny garage. We have no idea if it was at one time functional or if it is some sort of elaborate practical joke. We use it mostly as a junk room, and a place to keep the garbage until garbage day, at which time, I roll up the door and plop the trash cans out on the sidewalk.

Anyway, to recap, the things you should now know are:

a) Lousy aim
b) Tiny, stupid "garbage room" garage

Okay. On with the (by now completely un-thrilling and anticlimactic) story.

This morning around 11, I arrive home from running a few errands. You may imagine that by "errands" I mean eating scones off the naked back of an armless asian woman with some of Baltimore's intelectual elite or possibly arranging a series of diabolical prison breaks that will soon have this city on its knees, begging for mercy. I don't actually mean either of those things, but you may imagine that I do. I pull in behind a very shiny and obviously brand new blue Mustang. It's quite a pretty car, somewhat out of place in my neighborhood, and someone has gone to great lengths to really make it sparkle. It's one of these here:


(Common Wombat in no way is affiliated with, nor does he endorse, the Ford Motor Company. Unless they'd like to send him a free car. Then he'll endorse whatever they want him to, because Common Wombat is a big fat whore.)

I am distracted from my admiration for the pretty, pretty car, by the sight of something lying on the lid of one of my trash cans. I know what it is the second I see it. It's a little plastic sandwich bag filled with shit.

(Common Wombat is also in no way affiliated with, nor does he endorse, little plastic sandwich bags filled with shit.)

I keep my trash cans inside of my little tiny garage. They only sit outside for a few hours twice a week on garbage day, but in that short window of time between when the garbage men empty them, and when I take them back inside, they always manage to acquire a few bags of dog shit. It's irritating to have to house someone else's crap for a few days, but honestly I'm just glad they are actually picking up their turds instead of leaving them scattered around my kitchen door like a fly-encrusted mine-field. That's assuming that the pooch-poo comes in the standard approved package of an intact plastic shopping bag, tied off securely and placed inside my trash can. Double-bagged is even better. If I see you double-bagging, I'll come outside and kiss you.

This wasn't a trash bag, it wasn't tied off, and it wasn't actually in the can. This was a pile of fresh soft steamers in an open sandwich bag, lying on the lid of the can. That's just bad neighborship in my book, and it caused me to make the following face:



I'm a generally loving and kind guy. But there's only so much of dealing with someone else's smelly turd bombs that I can take before I snap a little. Besides, it's been a hard few weeks, you know?

So, full of righteous anger, I went over to the trash can (still making the face) and picked up the bag of shit by one corner. I summoned up all of my intense hatred for the dog walkers of America who don't practice neighborly shit-scooping practices, and with a mighty swipe of my bear-like paw, I flung the offending poo-pouch across the street.

Or at least, that's how it happened in my head. In reality the mighty swipe of my paw was more of a feeble flap of my flipper, and the little turd-sack wound up sailing sort of diagonally about 15 feet away...

...And right smack onto the trunk of the shiny new Mustang, where it promptly unloaded all of its little brown passengers to play all over the back of the car. Immediately my face of righteous rage morphed into my face of "holy shit I'm a gigantic asshole."



What does a good neighbor do after he has plastered the back of your expensive and spit-shined new car with fresh dog shit?

I wouldn't know. I hid in my kitchen.