Poop, an Old Dog, and My Dad’s Car

My day started and ended with poop.

Not figuratively – literally. I mean, I have lots of days where I think, “This is too much shit to handle in one day,” or “The shit just keeps on coming!” But, the other day, actual poop messed up my day more than once. And, I mean, messed it up.

On the way home from dinner the other night, it was rainy and wet and cold. I put my seven-year-old in the car and hugged my boyfriend goodnight. His driveway was full of leaves and a little slippery from all the rain. I got into the car I was borrowing from my father because mine was in the shop being repaired after a minor accident in which the guy in front of me stopped when he wasn’t supposed to, as in “Oh, shit. I just hit that guy.”

My dad’s car is stick shift, and I noticed as I was driving home, my left foot kept slipping off the clutch. That’s odd, I thought. I must have one of those slippery, wet leaves from Albie’s driveway stuck to the bottom of my boot. My daughter, Antonia, and I were talking and singing to the radio, and then we stopped at a light. “I smell poop,” I told her. She looked at me from the back seat.

“So do I,” she agreed.

“Did you step in it?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Look at the bottom of your boots.”

She carefully examined the bottom of her cowboy boots in the glow from the streetlights.

“No!” she emphatically told me again. “It’s not me.”

The light turned green, and once again as I tried to shift, my foot slipped off the clutch. The gears in my head started putting it all together. “Oh, great,” I said out loud.

“I still smell poop,” Antonia said. “It must be on your foot, Mama.”

I couldn’t figure out how I might possibly have poop on the bottom of my boot when all I did was walk from Albie’s house to the car in the driveway. Then, it hit me. Earlier in the night, when we were making dinner, Antonia and Albie’s daughter, Emma were in the TV room next to the kitchen, when suddenly, Emma called, “DAD! Someone pooped!”

By “someone” she meant one of their two dogs, and by one of the two dogs, she meant the dachshund that is 112 in dog years, because the three-year-old lab never messes in the house. Albie and I hurried to the other room. There it was on the floor right by the couch – Java poop. (That’s the geriatric dog’s name. Not at all intended to mean the poop smelled like coffee. It didn’t.)

After cleaning it up and lots of “Ewww! Gross!” from the girls, the old dog was sent outside. I felt bad for her having to go out into the cold, rainy night. She’s 112. She probably doesn’t even realize that she pooped in the house. Maybe she doesn’t even know that she pooped at all. If you were 112 years old, would you know if, or when or where you pooped? My point exactly.

What happened with Java’s bowels once she was outside, I can only guess. But, it seems that she only made it as far as the driveway instead of the lawn. Like I said, she is 112. She can’t see and she is mostly deaf. I’m sure the location of her poop is the least of her worries.

We arrived home and I carefully got out of the car and examined the clutch in my dad’s car. Covered in poop. Embedded in the treads. “Yup. There it is,” I said as I crouched down by the car to get a closer look.

“I want to see the poop!” said Antonia.

“Really? Come on,” I told her. “You have to get to bed. You don’t need to see the poop.”

I shuffled my feet through my wet yard in hopes that the grass and leaves would wipe my boot clean. Then, I took them off in the garage and ushered Antonia up to bed. I went back downstairs and cleaned my boots, but somehow forgot about the clutch in my dad’s car.

The next morning, Antonia woke up late for school, and I was urging her to dress quickly so she wouldn’t be late. Ten minutes later, when she still hadn’t come downstairs for breakfast, I walked down the hall and found her sitting on the toilet reading a book. She looked up at me. “I’m pooping,” she said.

When we finally got out the door, 20 minutes later than usual, I opened the car door and lo and behold, there was the poop-covered clutch. “Shit! I didn’t clean this last night,” I said aloud as I found the Clorox wipes in the garage. “Get in the car, Antonia. And, don’t repeat what I just said.” Antonia obeyed.

Once we were on our way to school, I apologized to my daughter for saying a bad word in front of her. “It’s OK, Mom,” she told me. “It’s just poop.”

Yes, Antonia. And some days, you deal with a bunch of it.

***Author’s Note: I returned my dad’s car to him several days ago. If I didn’t publish this story, he would never know about the mishap. Sorry, Dad!