an essay about urban poop, in vignettes

raising freddy (and fritzy of course but he has no independent motion yet) in this urban environment just a few blocks from scary parts of oakland is INTERESTING.

from my kitchen window i have seen 2 adult males and 1 elementary school age male peeing.

on our way to our apartment's little pocket park i saw (and then very quickly tried to UNsee) a person of indiscriminate gender in a pooping position... but the sounds were splashy...

at the pocket park there is a 100% chance of dog poop in the tanbark. but that's ok because there's this sign:



there are also mushrooms growing in the tanbark.

once there was an adult male sitting in the slide tower. it's a toddler slide.

***

then of course there was my guardian pigeon who lived on our porch and who jared tried to kill with a baseball bat many a time... i named him tom bombadil. i hate that character; jared loves that character. jared hates the pigeon; i learned to love the pigeon.



there was so much pigeon poop on our porch that our friends "victor" and "the zach" (the apartment managers) powerwashed it for us. that was a special memory for fred. and for me when i got to hold the powerwasher. and for victor when i sprayed him with the powerwasher. just misted him a little bit.

the pigeon is gone, the poop remains so we use the back door mostly. there is that much poop.

***

then of course there is the poop of my children. when fritzy poops it usually somehow gets up to his belly button (???)

freddy is potty trained so that is helpful. but the first time i put fritzy to bed upstairs and left fred downstairs to play, i came down to find him trapped under the table, weeping, and he had pooped his pants.  "lol."

***

i don't know. maybe fred will grow up and think nothing of the human feces and squatters-in-foreclosed-and-boarded-up-houses named paulette kissing him on the face and scaring the crap (get it?!) out of him yelling "i luv ya freddy" from a block away.

i feel a lot of anxiety about getting out of this environment before freddy goes to school and/ or finds a used needle. anxiety to get out in time, and anxiety about my self-serving desire to get out... anxiety about letting paulette kiss my boys, anxiety about raising them to ignore human beings the way i do...

poopy poop.