One autumn weekend, when I was about eight, my father took me to a park in the neighbourhood next to ours. I don’t remember how we got there – we might have biked or walked, or my mother might have dropped us on her way to shopping – but it was already late afternoon, and the sun had started setting.
Upon my suggestion, we started playing tag. My father was the chaser, and I was running away from him, when suddenly, he disappeared from my sight.
“Daddy?”
I looked around, but couldn’t find him. Then I heard his voice.
“I’m here!”
The voice came from the ground several feet away from me. When I looked carefully, I saw the top of my father’s head.
“Why are you sitting down?” I shouted. “Aren’t you chasing me?”
“I’m not sitting down,” came his reply. “I fell!”
“You got hurt?”
“No, but…” He slowly stood up. “I fell on a dog’s poop!”
My father turned around and ran toward the nearest fountain. As I watched, he put his shoes on the water surface and placed his hands under the running water.
“I was chasing you, and suddenly I slipped,” he explained to me while I laughed. “And there it was – the poop! I’d slipped on it! What a disaster!”
After that, my father didn’t want to continue playing anymore and said it was time for us to go home. It was now my turn to resent the dog poop, for cutting short the fun time we were having in the park.