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Jeff Whitten: Mom uses the Y word, more
editor's notes

From the rear lines of the pandemic, volume V:

 My mother used the “y” word Tuesday morning, and meant it.

“I was just about to go to bed,” she said, “and I happened to see this movement outside the house. So I went to see, and there was this dog, just pooping in the middle of the front yard, and a man standing there just watching his dog poop in the middle of my yard. Can you believe that? In the middle of the yard?”

She said she opened the door and was getting ready to give the man a piece of her mind while his dog “just looked at me,” when the man pulled out a plastic bag and picked up the offending feces.

Still fuming, Mom decided against confronting the man - which I admit I was thoroughly relieved to hear.

“I don’t think he even noticed me,” she said. “When I saw he was picking up the poop I just closed the door. But I was so mad. Right in the middle of the yard. Who lets their dog poop right in the middle of someone else’s yard? Oh, I was so upset I didn’t get to sleep until 1 a.m.”

And then it came out.

“He’s from down in the cul-de-sac, and I think he’s a YANKEE,” she said, in all caps, because, well, in her Georgia neighborhood just about every third person seems to hail from New York or Pennsylvania or Michigan or Ohio.

“Mom,” I wanted to say. “You can’t say the ‘y’ word nowadays. You’ll get DOXXED and SWATTED, and protested.”

It’s the times we live in, you see.

First thing you know, ANTIFA will hear about it, take umbrage and then it’s all over but the shouting.

And there will be plenty of that, emanating from tatted burly women lumberjacks setting up headquarters in her front yard in commandeered porta-potties, like giant post-apocalypse gnomides with a beef. They’ll use megaphones and demand she defund weed and feed and let canines compost her centipede, the way the Earth Mother and Fidel Castro intended. Or maybe not.

Still, it’s clear there are a growing number of presumed adults who think their dogs should be able to do their business wherever the urge hits them, and while that’s at least somewhat understandable, those who take the time to clean up afterward are in the minority. I suspect it’s a result of our more lenient, liberal society, where people constantly lubricated on banana peel oil and other assorted CBD products are out there vaping and arguing on Facebook instead of keeping tabs on what their pets are up to.

In short, it’s chaos, and it’s also the answer to a great old song: “Who let the dogs out?”

Everybody, that’s who.

To be honest, I have no scientific data to back up the claim that people are more prone these days to let their dogs poop willy nilly, but I once ran a half marathon in Pooler which is similarly swamped with humans who moved here from up north so they can tell us how screwed up traffic is.

As I sort of straggled along in back, running my usual 12-15-20-minute per mile pace amongst people who looked more suited to a good 10 seconds worth of Sumo wrestling, I entered a portion of the course looping around a small pond behind half a dozen vinyl McMansions stuck awfully close to one another.

It had been drizzling, and was kind of slick. What’s more, the little sidewalk around the pond was carpeted with what approximately 2,000 dogs of various intestinal capacities had enjoyed for supper the day before. If I could’ve got my phone camera figured out I would’ve taken pictures of it. It was a multicolored mess trampled by half-marathoners into what sort of looked like something Jasper Johns might’ve painted in his heyday, had his medium been dog poop and cement around ponds in Pooler.

“Did it never occur to these folks to clean up after their dogs,” I wondered, and did so aloud apparently, because a large woman ahead of me in a Georgia Bulldogs getup snarled something as she tried to run and wipe the bottom of her shoes off at the same time in the wet grass and nearly fell over. “They should all be shot, the (expletives deleted).”

That’s the spirit.

Of course, some will ask how much, in the great scheme of things, does a little dog excrement matter when so many other things of great and awful import are occurring daily?

But that’s missing the point, methinks. Little things lead to big things and it’s a slippery slope. First it’s the sidewalk, then it’s on the edge of your yard, then it’s in the middle of he yard, and then it’s on your front porch and then, well, half the dogs in the subdivision will be showing up to use the bathroom.

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