Poop It Forward

Friday, I took my kids, one of their friends, and my dog for a hike at a local nature preserve that will remain nameless for reasons I will soon divulge, and during our hike my son had to poop but the bathrooms were closed, and so I pointed him towards a good log to sit on, conveniently located near a pile of fallen leaves -- and he went and did his business and called it "the grossest thing ever" and then we hiked for a bit and my dog pooped but we were nowhere near a garbage can, so I bagged it and left the bag on the side of the path so I could pick it up on our way out of the woods and deposit it in the dumpster next to the locked bathroom (but I forgot that we weren't returning on that path and so the bag is still there, on the side of the path, full of poop, and it's my fault) and while all this poop related nonsense was happening, I could occasionally spy through the trees, across Route 1, the chain restaurant where my younger, childless colleagues were enjoying happy hour sans poop, and then, on Saturday night we had a few families over for dinner and the theme resurfaced: our children got sent to bed early because they found several bags of poop in the park and did the only logical thing: they threw the bags of poop at the other kids (and though I think there was some reciprocation, I'm pretty sure my kids started it, and so Alex's totally gross experience of pooping in the woods faded very quickly and had no lasting effect on him, and so now we have a new rule in our house: if you find a bag of poop at the park, don't pick it up and throw it at anyone . . . and, yesterday, to try to cosmically balance the scales of karma, I found the bags of poop in the park my children were chucking, and tossed them in the trash, and though it's highly unlikely that the person who may have hypothetically picked up the bag of poop I left in the woods, and selflessly carried it to a trashcan, just to make the world a better place, is reading this sentence, at least my dedicated readers know that I've paid my debt and evened the score).