I had to wash my hands, anyway

Here's a cautionary tale for you, with a moral and everything, depicting what happens when I try to relive my wild and crazy youth now that I'm an even lamer person than ever:

Whilst exploring a desolate park yesterday after a rain, D- and I were hard up for entertainment. Who knew all those other children and their whimsical background noise provided such a foundation for the fun of going to the park?

As D- asked me what game I wanted to play and I answered "I dunno" for the fifth time (I was out of ideas by that point-- I'm only so creative now that I've hit the big 2-7), I happened to notice amongst the bark chips a small gnarled piece of stick that looked like it could definitely pass for a bit of feces when propelled suddenly towards my 4-year-old son. Towards most anyone, in fact-- it was that inexplicably ideal. Of course, I'd need to accompany said throw with a sharp interjection and various flustered hand motions to impede the otherwise natural immediate suspicion as to why I'd be picking up and/or throwing such a thing in the first place.

This wouldn't be the first time in my life I'd pulled such a stunt-- it's a classic. I figured it was long past time to fully initiate my son into the wonderful world of hilarity boys of all ages inhabit.

Actually, in the interest of full disclosure... this would technically be at least the second time I'd tried this particular gag. But with the other time that I can think of, he had first opened himself up for the obvious response by misidentifying some lawn-aeration dirt castings as bizarrely prevalent bowel movements, so I was pretty much required at that point to pick one up and toss it to him without first disillusioning him. It was great! You'd have to have seen his confused look of betrayal and disgust, followed by laughter and appreciation for my simple genius, to fully understand my eternal amusement and encouragement to revisit it at a later date.

In my defense, that incident also made what could have been just another forgettable answer to one out of at least 17,456 questions in a random day into a highly memorable Teachable Moment, as my wife J- (a teacher) would call a completely different type of situation in which a mature grown-up would reasonably find him-or-herself.

So with this diverse and distinguished pedigree in mind, I picked up this perfect little bit of stick and carefully weighed what I was about to do, and as I did so, it slowly dawned on me that what I was holding in my hand was in fact a dried-up piece of actual poo. Canine, I believe... one roughly 30 pounds given an average build, I'd guess.

I quickly dropped the now-explicably-perfect-looking piece of excrement and decided that this game might not really be as funny as it obviously always will be.