So, last night I was really not in a good mood. My wife was at the hospital to get blood tests for my two year old son who might have eaten rat poison a few days before. The blood tests are to check his clotting factors to see if he actually ingested any of the warfarin.
So I was generally not a happy camper anyway.
Around eight o'clock I went out to get some stuff from the truck, and I see a guy walking his dog on the berm.
Some background: My house faces the corner of the TransCanada highway and there is a huge berm there as a noise barrier. The berm is quite large and is a good place for a scenic walk. People come from all of the inner neighborhoods of the city to walk their dogs there. Which is fine. Except for when their dogs take a crap there and they don't pick it up. That irritates me pretty bad for two reasons: A) I like to walk along that berm too, and I hate stepping in dog crap. B) In the spring, the smell of decaying dog crap after the snow melts is stomach turning.
So anyway I watch this guy walk his dog on the berm. I watch his dog take a crap on the berm. I watch him and his dog walk away from it. HE watches ME watch HIM.
That's a bit to much to bear. I mean if he had been even remotely shame-faced about it... but no.
"Hey buddy," I shouted, "Did your dog just take a s**t there?"
"What?"
"I said, did your dog just take a s**t there?"
"Yeah."
"You aren't going to clean it up?"
"No. I never do."
So I called him an a**hole, and that might have been the end of it, except that then he says, "What are you going to do about it?"
Now, I just about burst out laughing.
There are just too many levels on which that was funny to even begin to address.
Anyway, I told him I'd report him to city by-law enforcement.
"You do that," he says.
I say, "Ok, then, if you're fine with that, you won't mind telling me your name and showing some ID so I know where to send them?"
He was not fine with that.
To make a long story short, things went on from there. It turns out that he lives just down the block, so we sort of came to an understanding.
Still, we're not going to be having any BBQ's together.
Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. But I'm sick and tired of letting people get away with crap like that. I think that a lot of how society has slipped is down to stuff like that. We don't speak out about the little things. We don't say anything when people are rude or inconsiderate. We don't want to rock the boat. Don't want to make waves.
Maybe in the interest of neighborhood harmony I shouldn't have said anything, or maybe I could have handled it differently. I dunno.
What would Ogre have done?
