Littering

            Dennis loved the feel of those little grains between his toes. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his business, basking in the glory of his sand box in the back yard.  When he was done, he pulled his pants back up, kicked some sand over the waste, and went back to jumping on the trampoline.

            His mother had been watching him play, though, and came storming outside with a mixed look of fury and befuddlement on her face.   She pointed at the sand box as though it had just raped the neighbor’s puppies as she came to a stop in front of the trampoline.  She screwed her face up, like she always did when she was mad, and Dennis began to wonder why he thought she was at the front of the trampoline. Did trampolines have fronts? Maybe that was what Mom was so angry about, too.

            “Dennis, what the hell? What were you… Just… What the hell?”  She sputtered, shaking her finger at the sand box.  This did little to clear up his confusion about whether or not trampolines had fronts, so he stared at her with the blank look he got whenever dad talked about his “Poke Er” games. They didn’t make any sense. Either one of them.

            Seeing his confusion, Dennis’ mom sighed, scratched her head with the hand she had been using to point at the sand box, and took a few seconds to collect her thoughts.

            “Dennis, honey.  Why did you go poo in the sand box?  You know how to use the toilet; you did that yesterday. Why the sand box today? Don’t you want to be a grown up like Daddy?”

            “I do, I do!” Dennis nodded enthusiastically, “But I’m a cat today. Cats don’t poop in toilets. They use those boxes.  I had to go, so I used the sand box.”

            “But you’re not a cat, Dennis,” his mom said with obvious disapproval.

            “… Meow?” Dennis replied. He tried, in vain, to lick his butt, and rolled across the trampoline in continued efforts to make his mouth and anus connect.  His grunting didn’t help his “I’m a cat” case, either.

            Dennis’ mom sighed, again. She did that a lot, turns out. Life could be frustrating most of the time, much like when your kid shits in a sand box because he wants to be a cat.  But how do you deal with that situation when it comes around?  She didn’t quite know how to react, so she went back inside, leaving Dennis to live in his own little world until dinner time.