Sidewalks and Doggie Poopie Bags - The Mine Fields My Mind Wanders Into

I was sitting with a friend and talking to her about her husband's Beeotch of a parole officer. I won't go into too many details about how this situation came about (how we got ourselves a parole officer) because it isn't my story to tell, but will say that the parole officer has mentally given herself much more power than she should be allowed and gets off on screwing with people's lives. Yeah, he got into trouble, but she really seems to make things as difficult as possible-- almost as though she's daring the person to get angry and do something that would violate the terms of the court.

My friend had called her and yelled at her about getting off of her butt and doing something that she was supposed to do... oh, about three weeks before (sign papers allowing her husband to come home). The parole officer gave her a song and dance about how this and that had to happen and how they changed the process, blah, blah, blah. The necessary papers had been signed by the Judge three weeks ago, but she hadn't gotten around to doing her necessary paperwork and was trying to tell my friend that it would take another two weeks or something. Plus, they had to mail over the paperwork.

My friend, who I love to death, says point blank, "Why don't you just walk your lazy ass over and get the fucking thing? AND, YOUR paperwork should have been done weeks ago. YOU dropped the ball. He was supposed to be home three weeks ago, NOW GET OFF OF YOUR FAT ASS!" (I may have messed that last part up, but I know it was close.)

I am equally delighted that she had enough guts to say exactly what she meant to say, and horrified that she's done this because with Murphy's Law at work in the world, she'll get caught doing something and get a parole officer. Specifically, that parole officer. So I start in on the "Okay, just... no killing anyone, no stealing, don't get caught pooping on the sidewalk..."

Oh jeez. It pays sometimes to think about what you are saying before it comes out of your mouth. Poop on the sidewalk?! We cracked up laughing. We laughed until our sides hurt, until tears were streaming down my face, until I felt like I would die laughing because I couldn't catch breath.

You might think that just that sentence alone really isn't enough to garner such laughter... and you'd be right. It wasn't the poop on the sidewalk thing, it was the speculation about whether you'd have to bring a poop scoop and if you didn't whether you'd get fined... whether a leash around your neck would keep you from being arrested... whether they'd be putting up signs showing a human stick figure with a leash around it's neck and a pooper scooper in its hand... and how exactly I would broach the conversation about whether pooping on the sidewalk was in the City Code or not.

It was an hour of disgusting hilarity I will never take back.