Here’s the Scoop

You have problems. I know you do. Why else would you be coming to Lifetime Sentences to find the answers to all of life’s mysteries?

I won’t pretend to compare my problems with yours as we both know yours are more significant and if you would just spell them out for me, I would get back to you with solutions within the hour.

As for my problems, I like to take molehills and shove the dirt up into big piles until I have mountains. The big things in life I let pass. It is more important to me to concentrate on the fact that there is a pebble in my shoe, not on the sad reality that my shoes died 10 years ago and should have long ago been cremated. Stones usually fall into a man’s shoe from the top. Mine sneak in there from the holes in the soles. I am the original guy who cries over spilled milk. This summer, I spilled a whole pitcher of milk on the kitchen floor and tears welled up in my eyes and swear words, which I am unaccustomed to pronouncing, escaped my lips.

So here it is. Just now, as I was walking my dog, my pooper scooper broke. This is a device I have owned for six joyous months now and it is dysfunctional as I (tearfully) write to you. Before the pooper scooper, I had to bend down to the ground with a plastic bag to recover my doggie’s offerings and I just could no longer do it. Several times I lost my balance and almost landed on my head. I could see a dark day in my future when I would do a faceplant into doggie doo.

I loudly proclaimed my frustration at the dinner table and the next day, my ever resourceful daughter surprised me with a genuine, three-foot-long, state-of-the-fart pooper scooper. Not since the day I witnessed her being born has my heart been so filled.

And now, my scooper is pooched, or pooped, or something. I will scoop no more.

Just now I am in the midst of an Internet search for answers on how to properly clean up after a faceplant into dog poo. There are 342,219 replies to the search. I am going to go through everyone of them.

What were your problems again?

©2019 Jim Hagarty

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.