Mention The Word “Poop” And I’m There!

Paying attention in school was never easy for me. My mind would wander… thoughts of all my lonely squeak toys back home. Giggling to myself when I’d think about how all the hounds in class spend all their free time chasing tail – their own! I’d look longingly out the window at all the free space that I could be wander---- SQUIRREL!  See what I mean? I’m easily distracted.

Math especially through me for loop. Who decided that things have to always add up? Whole numbers?

Besides, I’m only interested in the numbers 1 and 2. As in the answers to the word problems “How many best dogs in the world who happen to be named Ria are there?” and “Including Mom & Dad, what is the average number of humans the best dog  in the world who happens to be named Ria can wrap around her little finger at any given time?”  And, of course, number 2 is also the less-fun way of saying poop.

Math and poop? I’m getting to that. All week, the mean one here has been walking around the house muttering to himself, furiously scribbling formulas and equations with Dry Erase markers on one of those clear Plexiglas boards that you see in movies and on TV so that the audience can see the pained-leading-to-ecstatic looks on the actor’s face as he has that eureka moment of mathematical ecstasy. Forget the fact that  it’s really, really hard to read all the crap on a clear board, what with all the stuff in the background, and focus on the drama! It’s really dramatic – with a capital “D”. On TV, anyway. Around here, it’s just a lot of mumbling and frenzied marker squeaking. Dumb. With a capital DUMB.



Today, though, when I got back in from Wegman’s, I  noticed how everything seemed different. Everything in the house had been straightened up. Gone were the piles of Algebra and theoretical Calculus textbooks. The floor was no longer littered with thesis papers stolen from the Princeton library. Empty shots of 5 Hour Energy Drink (regular and sugar-free) had been conscientiously placed in the recycling bin. What was going on here? What was happening?

And then I saw it. The board.

It had been wiped clean, meticulously so. So clean I could see my reflection in the mirror at the other end of the house. (Because it’s see-through, remember?) While I was out, there must have been some sort of breakthrough. An epiphany, maybe. Or worse! Maybe he had given up! Packed up all the nonsense and thrown in the towel on his great quest for answers…

And then I saw it. The board.

There was something written on the board. (It’s hard to see stuff that’s written on a clear board, remember?) Had it all come down to the one equation that had been meticulously written on the board? And as I nervously went to touch it, to caress it, I realized that it had been put there, not in the doubting  impermanence of a Dry Erase maker--no! It had been committed to foreverness by the powerful business end of a Sharpie. A chisel tipped Sharpie. A black one. Serious stuff.

Could it be as simple as this? Could it all come down to the uncomplicated, yet truly powerful pronouncement of fake-science I saw before me?

Maybe. Just maybe. As God is my witness and Dog is my co-pilot… I present… The Equation…

FOOD + TIME = POOP

To be continued…