The Girl Next Door

This is a story I saved from my first blog (which I deleted). I thought I'd share it again since it was just too funny:

When I was 8 or 9 years old I was into playing with a dirty little girl from across the street. I'm saying she was dirty because she always smelled salty, her hair was a bunch of wild tangles and she always had food spilled on her clothes. She lived in our neighborhood with her grandmother (whom she called her mother) half the year and her mother (whom she called her sister) the other half of the year. So, when she was in town I hung with her because she was different. I even tolerated her smell. My mom absolutely disallowed me to enter their house and strongly preferred that she not come in ours, so we played outside.

One day we were playing at the playground across the street and she decided to use the bathroom right under the Merry-Go-Round. When she told me about her plans, I suggested she walk home (which was literally two minutes away). She said "no, this is fine" and even invited me to relieve my bowels, too—as if this was a usual routine for her or something. I politely said no and wandered over to the swing set, slightly disturbed and fighting the urge to look over where she was squatting.

Moments later we got back to playing and I somehow forgot the whole poop thing. As we made our rounds in that tiny playground, I got bored with the other amusements and absentmindedly began running furiously around the Merry-Go-Round to get it spinning really fast. It was right about the time I planned to leap onto the spinning disk when I realized the mulch was curiously sticking to my brand new white Keds.

Yes, you guessed it. I had stepped right into her poop.

It was squishy and had wrapped itself up around the heel of my shoe—mulch and twigs jutted from it in every direction. As soon as I came to the horrid realization I screamed at her: "Your poop!." I then proceeded to limp straight home as fast as I could, fighting back dry heave after dry heave from the smell. The dirty girl followed me, spewing off sad apologies and trying to make me feel guilty for stepping in her poop. The craziest thing was when she tried to convince me to "lose" my shoes so that my mom wouldn't think that I had pooped on them. Sha-right. I poop in toilets. Not on my new Keds, sister. You're the dirty girl, not me.

Let's just say that was the last time I played with her.