Heart and Mind

Stepping in it. (And a Story About My Soiled Shoes)

You know what's really the worst?

Stepping in dog shit.

Well, there are other things that are worse, of course. War, famine, and poverty are examples that come to mind, but those are big things. When you look at suck-value relative to the concept at hand, nothing's worse than stepping in dog shit. For a simple little problem with no long-term effect, it's just awful.

In the realm of unexpectedly "stepping into" problems, I've done objectively "worse" things and been less annoyed by them. For example, here's a story...

Last fall, one of my babies got sick and my wife brought him to the hospital. He was there from about 11:30 pm to 7:00 am. It was a long night, short on sleep, to be sure. After they got home in the morning, I decided to take my other baby out to help keep the two tots separated so as not to spread illness. While walking through a parking lot with the baby in a stroller, I opted to hop the little curbed-off sections that divide the lot up. In these little strips there were lines of trees I was required to walk under in order to pass. Well, that's when it happened.

WHAM!!

In my semi-sleepy state, I walked at full-pace into a low hanging limb. I'm sure it looked horribly clumsy, but...hey...these things happen occasionally and anyone who claims they never have been victim to an accident like this is lying. So, in addition to looking stupid, it surprised the heck out of me, it knocked me to my knees, it made me slighlty disoriented for half-a-minute, it whacked the glasses right off my face, it made me bleed in two places, and it left a nice mark on my forehead for a couple of days ...and it kind of hurt.

AND YET!!! Even after all that, I found that to be less of a misfortune—and far more desirable—to stepping in dog shit.

At the very least, the tree-limb thing made for a semi-interesting tale to recant. Conversely, there's nothing interesting about that feeling you get when you're walking along and you feel that *SQUISH* that you just know is warm, creamy-yet-grainy, fresh dog crap. You feel it and you think, "Oh, F**K!!!!"

So what do we do after we step in it? The first thing we do after cursing is we make futile attempts to wipe it off by sliding our foot on the grass or the sidewalk a bunch of times. We are successful in getting the heavy stuff off, but most shoes—certainly all sneakers—have those little traction grooves that the dog feces get stuck in. There's no wiping it out of those little tracks.

And I don't know about you, but with me, wherever I walk for the next several hours—or until I get a chance to doff the shoes—I can mentally "feel" the sense of "unclean" on the bottom of the shoe in the area that was victim to the misstep. Sometimes I end up walking with a very slight limp, because it just feels wrong to step on that area.

And the smell. 'nough said.

When I was a kid and it happened to me or one of my pals, we used to get sticks and try to clean out the cracks of the shoe. F**k that. I won't do that anymore.

I know this to be true because it (stepping in shit) just happened to me a month ago and I chose not to try to clean the shoe with a stick. Or anything else. Here's what I did...

Actually, truth be told, I stepped in what I believe to be cat shit. But the concept is the same, so we can assume that the nature of the shit doesn't matter and continue our story. After stepping in it, I immediately took off the shoes and walked through my house (I was on my property when this all went down) straight to the back door and tossed the f**king things (both shoes) on the patio outside. I reasoned that I'd get the smell out of the house and figure out what I was going to do about the shoes later, as though later I'd be more in the mood to clean shit off my shoes. I think I half-believed I'd deal with the problem soon enough, but I think deep down I knew that they were out there simply in an effort to do NOTHING with them. And that's what happened. I did nothing.

F**k 'em! They were Payless Shoes, anyway. I think they were 25 bucks. Funny, I wouldn't "waste" 25 dollars to have a landscaper mow my lawn for me—which takes me hours. But I would be perfectly willing to essentially throw away 25 dollars on new shoes to avoid cleaning dog crap off of them.

So, being December and not exactly the season where you spend lots of time in the backyard, the shoes just sat there and I was able to ignore them and not actually have to deal with the decision of throwing them out vs. cleaning them. I guess I figured they'd eventually get completely ruined and I'd feel better about throwing them out.

At one point, after they had been out there for a couple of weeks, my father was visiting and he said, "You know you have a pair of shoes outside?"

My father likes to be fatherly and question me about things as though I don't know what's going on at my own house. I bit my lip before explaining why, because I knew he would not be down with my choice to throw the shoes outside and do nothing about them. A lecture would surely be forthcoming about wasting a good pair of shoes and about how "it must be nice to be so rich that you can just buy a new pair of shoes anytime they get dirty" or something like that. So, instead, I just answered factually and briefly:

"Yes. I know."

He probably wanted to ask more, but knew better not to. And he didn't.

I'm pleased to report, though, that I recently—Saturday—grabbed the shoes and started wearing them again. You see, after a month of sitting outside in whatever weather conditions we have had, they got pretty clean. Seriously! They look great! No sign of dog shit ever having been on them at all. Heavy rains must have washed it all away and cleaned those cracks out thoroughly. And, surprisingly, the external portions of the shoe that aren't the sole weren't that weather-worn. Which is, ultimately, pretty nice, because I really do like the shoes. Just not enough to deal with them when they get shit on the soles.

I suppose next time I could throw the shoes in the washing machine if I'm not concerned with them getting beaten up, as I clearly wasn't this time around. However, it kind of skeeves me to think of washing shit out in my laundry facilities, even though I do it all the time when the boys squirm and leave skid marks on the liner on the changing table after a particularly messy diaper.

And that's my story.

Next time, perhaps I'll address why I feel the need to asterisk out "f**k" on my blog, but seem perfectly willing to say "shit" eleven times without censoring it.

posted by Steve @ 5:05 PM