An Overreaction: A short story.
I wake up. Again. Why? I stumble out of bed and head to the bathroom. When I look in the mirror, I try smiling at the man I see - but I don’t even recognize him. When did he age? When did bags begin growing under his eyes? When did he start losing his hair? I don’t feel like the spry, enthusiastic man I once prided myself on being.
In my youth, days started with a spring out of bed and gratitude for the chance to participate in society, to socialize, to connect, to learn! I used to love to move and dance and flirt or, sometimes, even work! The synergetic zeal of getting into a flow or tossing ideas back and forth with people you trust… God, time has beaten that out of me. Beaten me senseless.
I don’t think time is my enemy here, though. Time itself has not robbed me of my faith in humanity - in my faith in myself. A fatherless childhood will do that, too. A promotion that should have gone to me did it. A woman that would have been happier had she picked me did it. Ending up alone in a huge house that I own, with no one to fill it with new memories, did it. So now I haunt my own home, stalking about for stimulation. For purpose.
I am utterly useless, and I seem to be the last one to figure it out. Every single day. When will I die? I roll my eyes in the mirror, dismissing those happy morning thoughts, to actually do my bathroom business.
The sun shines through the windows of my house. I don’t feel its warmth on my skin; instead, the air conditioning isolates me from the heat of a Texas summer morning. I take my first bite of the stale breakfast I made for myself today (like I do every day): cereal. The sugar gives me a rush. As I’m eating, the young woman I see every day, jogs down the street.
I wonder where she could possibly get the energy and time to run. Maybe if I didn’t have cereal every morning, I might have some energy to go on an early morning run, I think as I crunch on my Frosted Flakes. I know they’re bad for me, but I love them. I think we all have little vices we indulge in to make life a little more exciting.
I see her every day with her dumb little dog. She usually comes by a couple of times; I assume she does laps around my small block.
Today, she stops in front of my house and takes a deep breath. She is huffing and puffing as she pulls her phone from her pocket and snaps a “selfie.” While she does this, her dumb little dog begins to do its business. Disgusting. Then I chuckle because, judging by the angle the girl was standing, she may have captured her dog in a compromising position.
Then, to my indignation, the woman continues her jog, as if her dog had not just dropped a fat turd on my lawn!
The nerve of this girl! To drop the burden of cleaning up her dog’s bowel movements on me, a feeble old man - what right does she think she has to my time? To my lawn! I feel the rage pent up inside of me—I don’t even finish my cereal. I march myself to my garage, open my garage door, grab a lawn chair from the pile of fishing gear in the corner, march myself to the lawn, and set my chair—and my butt—next to the stinky excrement.
The smell is potent, and my anger is all-consuming. The hot morning air was likely to thank for that. But I stayed there. She comes down the street multiple times a day, every weekday (I know this because we often wave to each other), and it is Friday. She will be back. And she will answer for this crime. And it is a crime; in this county, it is LAW that you must pick up after your dog. I should call the police! They can air her out without much escalation. As much as I would enjoy teaching her a lesson, they can teach her a much more expensive lesson. One that will ruin her month(ly budget).
I seethe. Much like the stench of this dog dropping, I am festering in this Texas heat—really, how can anyone run in this?! My vexation jumps out of my body, tapping my toe to the ground, crossing my arms so tightly I fear I may get a heat stroke.
When she turns the corner for the second time, her dog trotting along her side, I begin to shake. Her stupid dog’s happy little face also enrages me. The woman smiles and waves at me—like she usually does—as she runs closer and closer. I feel my own heartbeat in my chest, my face puffy and red, as if I'm the one running.
I stand and wave back at her angrily to get her attention. “You’ve got some nerve!”
Now she seems to understand that I’m talking to her. She slows her jog until she’s jogging in place and takes out one of those high-tech earphones from her right ear and places it in her hand.
“Excuse me?” the woman stops jogging in place. The dog sits, calmly, happily. “Is something wrong?” She’s not even tired from the running, no panting. I don’t think I even see the glisten of sweat! What is she? Some kind of Olympian?
“‘oH Is SoMetHiNg WrOnG?’” I mock her. “Uh, yeah, you let your dog poop on my lawn, and you just left it here to stink up the whole neighborhood!”
“Oh!” She covers her mouth, eyes wide with embarrassment. She is older than I’d thought, maybe only 20 years younger than me. Up close, she has kind eyes and a muscular build. She pulls a bag out of her pocket. “I’m so sorry! Max here pooped before we got to this house, and I had to use my last bag, but I just ran to get some more so I could clean it up when I looped back around!” She bends down to pick up the poop and pet her Max. “I’m sorry!”
“Good!” I grunt, “Don’t you EVER pull an entitled, lazy stunt like that again!”
She continues to make excuses, like she’s some quirky awkward protagonist in a coming of age movie, “It’s funny, when this happens, I take a picture of the house he did it on, go grab a bag, and come back!” She shows me the photos on her phone, which she wasn’t in at all. Just the mailbox and the dog poop. She swipes a couple of times to show similar photos.
I scoff, “So this happens often?”
“I mean, as often as it happens to most dog owners.” She fiddles with the bag.
I roll my eyes at her back-sass. “Well, I should have called the cops. They’d teach you some kind of lesson about personal responsibility. What, do you think everyone just cleans up after you? That you’re the main character of the world? Is that why you think you can just do whatever you want to other people’s property?”
“I don’t think,” she stammers. “I just—” She looked like she may cry.
So I continue. Maybe I can scream a tear or two out.
“You probably don’t even own a house in this neighborhood, do you? You’re probably a renter, aren’t you? Because if you owned a house, you would understand what it was like to keep your shit nice and protect it from those who want to destroy the life you’ve made for yourself!”
“No one else has had a problem with me here. I pick it up every single time! I didn’t mean to disrespect you but what was I supposed to do? Pick it up with my hand?”
“You don’t know ANYTHING about respect! I had to work for 55 years before I could finally retire in this house. I’ve taken care of it every day of my life, because I RESPECT my things. My lawn is not public property! Stay off of it, or I will call the police next time! It’s illegal to not clean up your dog’s SHIT!” I spit at her. As I speak, the embarrassment in her eyes fades and changes to something else. A different type of embarrassment?
The woman was (probably) about to give me another round of excuses, but almost like someone flipped a switch in her brain, her face eases. “Ohhhhh,” she says as she puts her earphone back in her ear. “You just want to argue with someone.” She begins to jog away, almost nonchalantly. Almost.
“I do not!” I start shouting again. “You need to learn some goddamn respect! What, your generation can’t even have a conversation without getting oFfEnDEd? Do you know how much a fine for littering—”
She whips back around, angrily, ripping out both of her fancy earphones this time. For a second, I feared she might hit me. The calm runner I saw every day was gone. She was basically panting, like what she was about to say would take all the energy she had left.
“You came outside from your rEspECtaBle, cold air-conditioned paid-off retirement home to sit in the hot Texas sun with DOG SHIT. And then you yelled at me for a misunderstanding that—” she holds up the doggy bag. “I HAVE CORRECTED and have apologized for, and now… you’re STILL yelling at me?” She scoffs. “Because you know soooo much about respect!”
She shoves her earphones back into her ears and she and her dog skip along their merry way, but not before leaving me with a pitiful, “You’ve got nothing better to do.”
I watch her jog away, the sun cooking my skin. I could just run with her. I used to have energy like that, long ago. Now I glance back at my home, not wanting to go back in.
After putting up my lawn chair and closing my garage, I return to the kitchen table. My skin cools down, and it feels as if someone’s poured ice water on my fire. That other embarrassment was pity. I know, because I feel it for myself now. I return to my cereal. It is soggy.
