Nine-year old me honorably stands up for driveway hygiene.

So back when I was in elementary school, I was a pretty busy kid. My parents both work full time and I’m their only child so I among my many chores was keeping the driveway clean. Easy, right? Except that once in a while people let their dogs take a crap there and it’s all ewww and gross and smelly.

So one day I came home from school and this new lady in the block was walking her poodle (? It was small, white and curly but I don’t know jack sh*t about dogs tbh) a few meters in front of me. When they reached our driveway, the dog swerved right and dropped like six or seven turds while walking, a few paces in between each. I didn’t even know dogs did that. The lady didn’t even bother.

That was too much. My pride as a driveway-sweeper was hurt. “Excuse me, ma'am, you lost something on our driveway!”, I yelled. But she just turned around, sneered at me and went on like nothing happened. Then it struck me - it must have been her dog that had ruined my driveway with increasing frequency lately!

So I did what any reasonable nine year old would do: I grabbed my trusty shovel, swept all the turds on there and marched over to her house (being paranoid someone would see me and I’d get in trouble all the while) and dumped them on her doorstep, patting them firmly into the mat with my shovel and ringing the bell when I was satisfied with the mess, then running away and giggling maniacally.

I never told my parents about this but I saw her on my way home after that a few times. She’d always glare at me but the frequency of dog poop in the driveway went back to normal