A Nice Day of Bonding With My
Son....Until...
The past few weeks have
been extremely hectic for me. Thanks to
people taking vacations, and the Home
Improvement show at the Nassau Coliseum last
month, I've had a grand total of 2 days off
for the past month. And one of those days, I
had to go to Massachusetts for my annual
fantasy baseball auction. This has left me
very little time for my kids, but especially
my son, who has really missed having daddy
around.
So, this past weekend, I took my kids up to
my parents' house in Springfield, MA. I saw
it as an opportunity to not only see my
folks, but spend some quality time with
Joey.
After morning church services, and an Easter
egg hunt, I went into the back yard to play
catch with Joey. He had a blast, finally
having daddy around. As my son picked up an
errant throw, my internal dialogue kicked
in.
Now, one thing about internal dialogues is
that they occur much faster than spoken
words (unless you're one of those people
that moves their lips while reading). For
example, if I see a hot teenager in a skimpy
outfit, I could say to myself "I'd like to
do some filthy things to her", but in my
mind I've already finished about 30 lewd,
borderline illegal acts on her, been
arrested, convicted, thrown in jail, and
been repeatedly raped by a biker gang in
prison.
So, in the 2 seconds it took for his throw
to reach me, my internal dialogue went
something like this:
Boy, this is great. My son is getting so
big, so fast. And he can really throw! Look
at that arm! I tell ya, this kid is going to
be pitching for the Red Sox one day! But,
wait a minute... wasn't the ball we were
using red? Well, maybe it fell in the mud or
something... even though it's been bone
dry... well, they have been doing a lot of
landscaping here the past month, so maybe it
landed in some stirred-up soil. Wait,
there's the red ball, behind him! Okay,
maybe he grabbed one of the dog's tennis
balls by mistake. But, that's a weird shape
for a tennis ball... in fact, it doesn't
look like any ball I've ever seen... wait a
minute... the dog was out here! Oh, no! NO!
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
As quickly as my internal dialogue went, I
wasn't quick enough to move out of the way.
Or even get my hand out of the way, for that
matter. My damaged brain did manage to get
the message to my hand to NOT squeeze when
the lump of dog poo hit my hand. So it hit
with a resounding splat against my hand, and
fell to the ground. My son laughed heartily
as I stared at my hand, now sporting a 1" x
2" brown poop outline.
The look of disgust and disdain stayed on my
face during the 15 minutes it took to scrub
my hands raw, and stayed on my face during
dinner. Thankfully my family is not privy to
my poop misadventures from the past few
months, otherwise they all would surely have
soiled themselves from laughing so hard at
me.