The Walking Deaf

Large7/09/2018 11:55 AM

Morning, and a Happy 71st Birthday to OJ Simpson.

Was taking a walk yesterday with my dog. Just he and I. I usually do maybe 4 or 5 miles with him at a nice leisurely pace, just to clear my head and to get my iWatch off my fucking back… I don’t know when I signed up for alerts on when I should stand up, or breath, or exercise, but I assume it was my wife and/or kids who programmed it into my preferences when I wasn’t looking. My kids also changed my username on all of our Apple products to “Deez Nuts”, so that is what Siri calls me whenever we interact.

Anyhoo, I got maybe 4 or 5 blocks away from my house on my normal walking route and I noticed a phenomenon that I really don’t understand. There are a number of houses for sale in my neighborhood. I think once people have their youngest graduate from local schools they either downsize, or get the fuck out of town so their kids have no place to come back to after college. That is my ultimate plan as well. Maybe 10-12 more years here, and then off to fucking Iceland.

So with all these houses up for sale, the “FOR SALE” signs on the front yard inexplicably include very large headshots of the agents selling the houses. Why do they do that?

It’s almost exclusively women selling houses in my town it seems, and from the signs I have spied, they are all moderately attractive. Still, I know guys who want to do a lot of things to moderately attractive middle-agedwomen… None of those things involve buying a house. Do they really think the cheesecake is an incremental positive?

Here’s an idea: Save the yearbook photo, and maybe put a big picture of the price of the house you are selling on the sign? Seems like potential buyers would be more interested in that than how your latest perm is holding up.

Continuing on my walk, my dog shit right away, and right away I picked it up in a bag from the grocery store. I am not the type of animal that lets his dog shit on a person’s lawn and leaves it there (unless I hate the person who owns the lawn in question), but I am also exactly the type of animal who throws plastic bags full of dog shit down the nearest sewer grate. I know that is not environmentally sound, but I dislike walking with a bag of warm dogshit, so fuck the earth.

Maybe a half mile later, my dog does the unthinkable… He shits AGAIN. Which he never does. But it’s all good because I have a second bag, and there is a park only a block up that does not allow dogs, but does have a garbage can.

The second bag was unfortunately one of those flimsier clear plastic bags you fill with tomatoes in the produce department. I was able to use it regardless because I am outdoorsy and I adapt. The only downside is my dog’s stool was very visible through the clear plastic, and there were no open sewer grates in sight, so I had to walk with visible shit until I hit this playground.

When I got there, the park was hosting a baseball game and a shitload of families, and even though there is a fairly big sign saying “No Dogs Allowed”, I thought it would be okay to just run in maybe 20 yards to toss my shit-bag, and then hustle off.

I skipped by a family on my way to the garbage, and my dog might have walked across the blanket they had laid out, which apparently incensed a woman. She yelled something at me, which I ignored on my way to the can, and then equally ignored her on my way back out of the park.

Apparently, she took such umbrage with my ignorance of her complaints that she actually followed me to presumably chew me out. When she eventually got in front of me, she began yelling.

So I looked at her mouth and said, “Dalk slower… I need to reeb libs.”

And she stopped talking altogether.

So I continued, “I an solly, but you neeb to dalk slower… I am deaf.”

So she mouthed very slowly and deliberately, “SORRY… MY… MISTAKE.”, and walked away blushing.

And I continued my walk.

There were at least one or two families there that knew me, and I only hope they spoke to the woman afterwards, because shit like that is such lightning in a jar. I hope everyone hears about it.

That’s not the first time I pretended to be deaf in order to avoid confrontation, and it won’t be the last.

As my walk was later coming to an end, I purposely timed it to go by a neighbor’s house my daughter was having a playdate with. It was only a couple blocks from my house and my little girl was thrilled to be picked up by me and the dog on foot.

On our walk home, she asked me what “jaywalking” meant. Apparently, she learned it while she was visiting my folks in Brooklyn, so she wanted to confirm that it meant crossing the street either outside of a crosswalk or against a traffic light.

I told her, “No no, angel… Jaywalking is neither of the things. Jaywalking is when you take a leisurely walk with a friend who is Jewish.” Which I think she bought… Kids are dumb.