My first job today was to clean up dog turd.
What sheer unadulterated joy.
Ten minutes into a lovely walk yesterday my son trod in a turd. About three seconds after treading in the aforementioned turd, he had a strop, caused entirely by the turd, inasmuch as we had to stop having fun feeding the ducks in order to deal with the turd.
No two year old in their right mind wants to stand still by a lake full of ducks while they have bread in their hands just so that their mum can remove a turd from their shoes, and so the turd migrated, via the medium of a tantrum, to his trousers, to my hands, to the buggy and to the rain cover.
We walked home, a sorry, turdish state. Or rather I walked home pushing a buggy containing a very miserable child.
And a turd.
Upon arriving home I set about the task of removing turd covered clothing and cleaning turd covered skin. I abandoned the turd covered buggy, rain cover and shoes in the garage and tried to cheer up my disappointed child.
Alas, my turd covered buggy and my son's turd covered shoes are key components in our daily lives and they could not be ignored forever, and so armed with a bucket and sponge I set about removing this turd from our lives altogether.
Whilst deturdifying my buggy I had time to compose a message in my head to the owner of the dog whose turd my son came into direct contact with. It goes something like this:
"You utterly selfish revolting and hideous human being.
You are a lazy, antisocial cretin with no consideration for others with whom you share your community. It is not okay to leave turds where people can stand in them, least of all children who might think "oooh, what's that" and scoop a bit in their hands to make a mud pie, or who might kick a football right through it and then head that ball, or who might simply just stand in it with really thick tread shoes.
Maybe, like me, you don't like the idea of cleaning up turds. In which case my friend, the solution is simple. Do not own a dog.
Perhaps I should allow my son to crouch down in front of your front door and return the favour. Or maybe I should empty the contents of his nappy bin outside your house.
Or should I just walk up to you and punch you in the face with my turd covered hands? I'm pretty sure a jury of my peers would totally understand.
Please, next time, just take a second to think about all the places that turd might end up. And then do the decent thing and clean it up.
You knob."
There, I feel a bit better now.
