Dog Shit and Other Saturday Morning Rituals

in the morning we awake to

dog shit on the kitchen floor,

Cody, our family dog is getting old,

he can no longer control his bowels,

this is not the first time;

“that dog has got to go!!” cries my wife;

I suppose she’ll want to get rid of me

when I start shitting on the kitchen floor;

upstairs, my grandson watches

Saturday morning cartoons,

Hercules or some other super hero, I think,

when it is over he and I will go to McDonalds,

for our ritual hotcakes and sausage,

he usually eats all the sausage and

about a quarter of the hotcakes,

I eat the rest,

I think that is my role in life now,

to finish eating what he cannot,

someday he will grow up and eat

everything on his plate;

I suppose I will starve to death then;

elsewhere, my 15 year old comes

bursting through the kitchen door,

fresh from spending the night

at her best friend’s house;

“watch the dog shit!” I cry out;

“Ooooooh! Gross!” she replies;

then bounds up the stairs to her room,

where she will sleep most of the day,

after being up all night talking

to boys on the phone;

she thinks I don’t know

about these things;

meanwhile, I get out the paper towels

and Lysol,

to clean up Cody’s shit,

who looks at me with deeply

apologetic eyes;

“it’s ok” I tell him,

“we’re all getting old”

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