After a shitty summer of health issues—including most recently a bout of pneumonia, of which I am now thankfully on the mend—I was finally ready on Labor Day morning to start running again with Sharkita. On our way to Prospect Park, Shark found an appropriate spot to do her business; however, this day was not business as usual. Holiday weekends tend to turn sidewalks into delectable doggy buffets, which unfortunately wreaks havoc on her digestive system. Instead of perfect firm Evermore poops, there was a steaming, wet pile of shit.
Luckily I had a brand new roll of poop bags and tore off the first one to do my civic doodie duty. Scrunching up my face, I cleaned up the mess and picked up the bag to tie it off. Then the unthinkable happened. The bag was defective and completely open on the bottom. In a fall that seemed to defy the laws of physics, the shit fell onto my fanny pack, ricocheted off of my knee and landed with a splat. My hand, legs and bag were covered in dog poop. For a moment I was paralyzed, but then I did the only thing that made sense. I got another bag out cleaned up the mess, wiped off as best as possible in the grass and continued jogging, because dammit, I was not going to let a shitty incident ruin my run.
In the park I ran by hundreds of people and realized that none of them had any idea of the shit I had just been through—even more importantly, I had no idea what shit they may have been through. Moral of the story, shit happens to everyone, and the best thing you can do when it happens to you is clean up the mess, keep moving and laugh at the absurdity of it all.