Great program: simple, easy to understand, easy for the young Scouts to handle. All good.
I am well past the point where any of my sons are Cub Scout aged, so I no longer have occasion to be reminded of it until I see the uniformed little collectors scurrying around, thrilled at each new donation they pick up.
So I am awake this Saturday, doing my usual “curse tehg gods for my existence as I wait for the coffeemaker to hurry up dammit” routine, and our dogs go nuts: barking, leaping against front door, howling. I glance around corner to see if perhaps someone is there, or if there was a delivery, or if maybe the neighbors are out with their Shih-tzu which to my dogs looks like a walking McNugget.
Nothing. “Stupid dumb dogs,” think, and return to the aforementioned cursing and waiting.
A few seconds later, the dogs AGAIN go nuts, this time even louder. Again I glance, and this time I see a tiny little Cub Scout — Cindy Lou Who Scout — leave something on my porch and then scuttle away quickly. Again I yell at dogs to shut up, I pour my coffee, and I step out to see what is going on. I see the Scout — along with his mom and two other Cubs and a wagon loaded with bags of donations — rounding the corner to leave our cul-de-sac.
“Oh yeah…” I mumble. “Super Bowl of Giving. Cool.”
I glance down and there’s a small white Target bag tied closed, with what looks like a large handful of gravel inside.
“Wow— good thinking!” I think. “They provide donation bags, and weigh them down so they don’t just blow around and create an ugly litter situation!” So I pick up my “donation bag” and come inside to see what canned goods I can part with. I open the bag to dump out the gravel, and that’s when I suddenly reassemble these details into a whole different mental LEGO construction.
This is not a donation bag.
This is a bag of cat shit.
Which The Wife collected from our two litter boxes. And tied closed. And dropped outside on our front porch for me to put into the trash whenever I first went outside.
Which was sitting there on the my front porch. On the Super Bowl of Giving.
When a happy little Scout saw “another donation.”
“OH MY GOD…” I shout and sprint back to my door. I bolt outside, scream ‘WAIT! NO! IT WAS A MISTAKE!”
But I see now Cubs. I rush back and grab my keys and hop into the van: I HAVE to find that Cub Scout and explain. And apologize. Beg forgiveness. “IT’S ALL A HUGE FUNNY MISUNDERSTANDING!” I am pre-explaining to myself aloud in the car. ‘WE’RE NOT THAT KIND OF SICK TWISTED SICKO! REALLY!”
(Well, we might be, but the fact remains that we did NOT intentionally leave a bag of cat crap for a Cub Scout donation. That’s beyond even my childish evility, at least on the SUper Bowl fo Giving. This early. Without my coffee yet, which is still back in my kitchen next to an open bag of cat droppings in my kitchen.)
I circle thru our neighborhood twice, but I never see those Scouts. Chances are, I’ll never see them again. In my mind, I can hear that poor Cub Scout’s Mom: “Jimmy— don’t you EVER EVER go back to that AWFUL neighborhood ever again! DO YOU HEAR ME!?!”
I can hear her reporting this obscene sick demented behavior at the next Pack Meeting: “Sweet mother of god! WHAT KIND OF BASTARD DOES THAT?”
I can see the Dad consoling his son: “Jimmy, there are some bad people in the world. And one fine day we shall hunt them down and use them for dingo fodder.”
In my mind, the imagined conversations are always excellent.
I pull back into my driveway, literally on the verge of tears. Tears of shame, embarrassment, and pity. And as I am sitting there, my phone pings: next text message from The Wife:
left bag of litter on the porch. remember to put in trash. thx
And so it goes.
1 comment:
As if the gods required any further tragicomic evidence to punish you. More than they already have.
Post a Comment