Shitted!

A dark and scatological tale...

PROLOGUE

2023 EXT: (A children’s park): 4yo Young Viking is running, slips, rolls… it’s dogshit he slipped in and rolled in

2024 EXT: (Same park): 5yo Young Viking is running around on his scooter, jumps off, steps in… dogshit.

2025: EXT: (Sitting at the bar near the park, talking with a friend): A fat man with a small dog, walking in the park. No visible doggie bags. He walks off toward the park with the dog. My eldest daughter is here too. I task her with espionage. Follow the fat man. Find out about the inevitable dogshit. A few minutes later she return…

Scorpio Girl: His dog crapped. He didn’t pick it up. He’s on his way back.

Me: Nods. Waits for fat man to return. I get up as soon as I see him approaching and head rather quickly and meaningfully towards him. And I am ready to roll the fat man in his own dog’s shit.

“Are you going to pick up your dog’s shit? Or do I need to make you? Since my little son fell into dogshit twice since I have been here and that’s a park, not your dog’s toilet.”

FM: “Oh… well, I was going home to get some bags.”

Me: “Yeah I’m sure you were. Where’s your house?”

FM: “Uh… there (points).”

Me: “Alright, go get them I’ll be here waiting.”

FM: “Or what?”

Silly fat man, silly, silly fat man. He thinks I may be the average loudmouth wop. Or maybe he’s just stupid.

Me: “Or else you’re picking it up right now, with your face.”

FM: He’s a little stunned but he tries once more “You think so?”

Me: “I know so. Wanna find out?”

He’s very close to really being dragged across the park and having his nose rubbed in dogshit.

FM: “No, okay. I’ll clean it up.”

It’s a miracle. Almost as if violence always works. Amazing. World peace and 30 points in IQ gain in an instant.

Me: “Let’s see it then.”

The fat man goes to a trash bin, rummages in it, finds a plastic, uses it to collect his dogshit. I guess he’d also “forgot” he’d “run out” of bags at home.

I go back to our table.

Friend: “G… I know that guy… he’s my neighbour.”

It’s a small village everyone is someone’s neighbour.

Me: “So sue me, I skipped saying `Good morning`”.

Friend: Chuckles.

***

Chapter 1 - The Stomp

***

EXT: Same Bar/Park area. It’s Boomer era songs night. Most of the village is there, plenty of kids running around the park, including our savages.

I’m in the toilet after a couple of drinks. I hear a banging on the door and the voice of my 2 yo Aryan Girl. I can’t make out what she says but she is a daddy’s girl and tries to follow me everywhere so I tell her through the door to wait a minute. When I am finished I open to door to see the poor thing standing on one leg, her other little shoe covered in shit.

Aryan Girl: “Dad, I have poo on my shoe.”

Me: Internally sinning against most languages on Earth. “I see that darling. Ok, sorry, come in here and we’ll try to clean it up.”

It’s hopeless. The shit is a soft/sticky, awful stench variety, it’s ingrained into the stitching of her little trainers. I carefully remove her shoes, check she didn’t track any into here, which she miraculously did not, place the shoes in a plastic bin after having wrapped them in toilet paper. I bring them out to the wife (she’s a hoarder, she may want to keep them. At least until she tries to clean them, I figure.)

Wife: “What happened? where are her shoes?”

Me: “In here. Covered in shit.”

Wife: “Oh dammit. How did she manage that?”

Me: “I dunno. I guess she stepped in dogshit. You know what people with dogs around here are like…”

Aryan Girl: “No, it was [Young Viking’s] poo.”

Me and Wife: Both stare at Aryan Girl. “What?”

Aryan Girl: “Yes. [Young Viking] pooed. There in the garden.”

Me: Face scrunching up into exasperation. “What the ffff….”

Wife: Looks at me with that look of desperation a woman might have when the Titanic is sinking and there are no more lifeboats, shaking her head. No words forming.

Me: Thinking: `Where is that little asshole, and does he still have his pants on?` to the tune of ♪♪Dark Clouds are Rising…♪♪

See Young Viking, running past. Grab him.

“Did you just take a dump on the grass?”

YV: With perfect innocence in his face “Yeah.”

Me: Total WHAT THE FUCK Face! No words.

YV: “I needed to poo.”

Me: “Where!?”

YV: Points to a corner of green that abuts near the museum and church, which is really just one medieval building. “There in that corner.”

Me: “Why?!” Second WHAT THE FUCK face.

YV: As if confused. “Because I needed to poo. It was too long to wait until we go home.”

Me: “What about the toilet in the bar? The one you always used before?!!?”

YV: With the look Archimedes had when he figured out volumes, just before he leaped out shouting Eureka. “Oh… yeah. I forgot.”

Me: “You forgot that we don’t just shit on the grass in public?”

[Note: Apparently he managed it without any witnesses that were not blood relatives, as we later discovered.]

YV: Silently looks at me. A window-licker wouldn’t blink.

Me: “What did you wipe your ass with?”

YV: “Nothing.”

Me: I don’t have any hair left to pull out. “So you also probably have shitty underwear. Go to the toilet and wipe your arse. And check your underwear.”

He returns shortly thereafter, telling me happily his underpants are clean and now so is his ass. He also informs me the toilet paper in the toilet was finished but he resourcefully asked the bar owner for napkins.

I may have twitched.

Young Viking goes off again. One hopes not to shit in Church, or throw it at passerby’s because he may have seen a nature programme about monkey in captivity. Fuck knows.

Piglet: (the 4 yo, which incidentally also looks beautiful with curly locks, only brown instead of blonde, and IF she could stay clean/without food all over her face/clothing, surrounds, would be quite the angelic little girl) to the wife: “Mommy… [Young Viking] did a stinky turd in the garden there, and then Aryan Girl stepped in it!”

(She’s the family snitch.)

Wife: “Yes darling, we know. And where where you?”

Piglet: Happily! “Watching!”

Wife: Resignedly. “Of course you were,” then, turning to me: “I guess you can’t say much to the fat man with the dog now, can you, my love?”

Me: “I may have to apologise for any shit his dog has trodden into.”

***

Chapter 2 - Curing the Hoarding

***

Two days later

***

Wife: “What’s in that bag outside by the bins?”

Me: “Aryan Girl’s shitty shoes.”

Wife: “What? I though you cleaned those!”

Me: “They are not cleanable. But be my guest.”

***

Ten minutes later

***

Wife: Walks back in.

Me: Looks at her meaningfully, slight smile.

Wife: Defeated. “I binned them”

Me: Nods.

***

Chapter 3 - The Reveal

***

Weeks Later

***

It’s been a long day, wife asked we get pizza instead. Order was made, and to give her a break I take the three little beasts with me, Young Viking (YV - age 6), Piglet (P - age 4), and their sister, Aryan Girl (AG - age 2).

A propo of nothing, YV starts to talk to his sister that is sitting behind him in the car.

YV: “[P] do you remember when you shitted in those people’s garden?”

P: Laughing hysterically “That was funny, [YV] and do you remember when you shitted in the garden in the park?”

YV and P: Both laughing hysterically.

Normally I would have told them to stop saying “shitted” but they had been indoors all day, they had been relatively good (no fires started, no pets killed, [the cats are semi-feral and quick] no crapping in the lounge or destroying anything valuable [that I knew of]). So I let it run… and so I discovered more…

AG: Suspiciously silent.

P: “And then you told [AG] to stomp your shit!” More hysterical laughter.

YG: “Yeah! And she did!” MORE HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER.

AG: Still silent.

Me: Silently to myself: What. The. Fuck…

P: “And when I shitted in the garden of those people daddy was scared he would slide into my shit, because it was so steep!” More hysterical laughter.

Me: “[Aryan Girl]…”

AG: “Yes Daddy?”

Me: “Did [YV] tell you to stomp on his turd in that garden area near the park?”

AG: “Yes.”

Me: “And you did it?”

AG: “Yes.”

Me: Turning to look at YV sitting in the passenger seat next to me. “You told her to do that?”

YV: Smiling. “Yes.”

Me: “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

YV: Still smiling, “It was funny.”

Me: Thinking… Can’t fault his reasoning there, from his perspective. He’s kinda got a point. “I don’t think your mother will think it was funny. We had to throw her shoes away. You know that right? Do you think she will find it funny?”

YV: “No.” Waits a couple of seconds then adds: “But it was still funny.”

EPILOGUE

INT: Later, at home. Kids in bed, sleeping. Me and the wife alone in the bedroom.

Me: “I wasn’t like that. They don’t get that behaviour from me. I was well-behaved and basically respectful of my parents. That’s your DNA.”

Wife: “No. It’s not just me. It’s you too.”

Me: “But no, babe, I wasn’t like that. Rebelliously not giving a shit like that… okay, poor choice of words. They clearly give a LOT of shit.”

Wife: “Oh yeah, the rebelliousness is from me. But I wouldn’t do naughty stuff if I knew I was gonna get caught and get in trouble for it.”

Me: “Yeah but they get caught all the time, it’s like they are not just evil, they are retarded too.”

Wife: “No, they are not stupid it’s just they don’t give a shit. And the little one is the worst. You tell her she’s gonna get a spanking if she does it and she still does it and doesn’t give a shit even if she gets the spanking.”

Me: “But that’s what I mean, I wasn’t like that.”

Wife: “Oh yes, that is you. I told you: it’s both of us. They got my rebelliousness and want-to-do-whatever-I-want-to-do attitude, and then it’s worse, because they also have your, I-don’t-give-a-shit, I’m-not-scared, I’m-going-to-do-it-anyway attitude.”

Me: The terrible realisation my wife is right dawning slowly on my face.

I wasn’t especially naughty or rebellious really, but if I got it into my head I was going to do something, no amount of threats or even actual consequences, would dissuade me.

She on the other hand couldn’t follow a rule if her life depended on it, but she would toe the line if there was appreciable consequences to being caught breaking it. She’s right. They got the worst/best of our attitudes towards authority, mixed them together and came up with a toxic, radioactive, anti-establishment approach to life on steroids.

Me: “… Well… maybe if the apocalypse happens… it might serve them well.”

Wife: “Or if they cause it…”

***

The Cherubs, asleep in their beds, look like the picture of childhood innocence and purity.

***

We console ourselves with the thought that some of the most Catholic people ever were crusaders, that lopped off heads, probably shat in Muslim gardens all over the Holy Land, and still one hopes they made it to Heaven.

Deus Vult. God’s Will be done.