Florence in Post-Squat Formation

My older boy has decided to leave me, so my wife has decided to buy him a damn dog. Can you make this sound logical? Debbie’s specious reasoning goes something like, well, Donald’s always wanted a dog, so we best get him one before he’s all gone and forming nostalgically bitter recollections of his youth. As if a late, desperate gesture will erase his non-memories of a decade of being denied a slobbering best friend. Seems to me that this dog, who we’ll call “Florence”, is more of a hairy, female replacement brother for the younger boy, who we’ll call “Steven“, when Donald is gone.
Donald is using college as an excuse for eventually moving out. Malcontent that he is, he’s gone so far as to abandon his half-assed ways, utilizing his whole ass to get himself a full academic scholarship to Bucknell in Pennsylvania. Enter Florence, aka Flo-Jo the Dog Sprinter. One day she’s on death row in the Crenshaw pound, the next she’s sprinting up Brand Boulevard in a superfluous attempt to prove that she’s faster than Debbie. Debbie’s impressed with her speed, so we name her Florence, or Flo-Jo, in honor of the late Florence Griffith-Joyner. Because she’s fast!
But the upshot is she’s not fast. I find this out when I take her for a morning run to the bookstore, which begins in a northward direction from my domicile, on Figueroa Boulevard. I’m all eager to match wits and leg sprininginess with this furry youngster, but get this: everytime we pass a damn tree, she hits the breaks and sniffs at it. I don’t know what silliness she’s up to, but I’m here to run, damnit, so every ten feet I give her a tug to separate her from a stinky tree. Then she stops in some poor bastard’s front lawn, nary a tree within sniffing distance, and what begins as an innocent squat…
It’s too horrific to describe. Who knew such things occur in plain sight, outside of genteel bathrooms? I have a leash in one hand, my other hand in my other hand, and trepidation in my alleged heart. And all that soggy shit on someone’s lawn. So I venture to the curb, making sure to fix Florence with the stink eye, and pick up what remains of a flattened styrofoam cup. It’s about half the size of Flo-Jo’s mojo.
I have a leash in one hand, and a poopy piece of styrofoam pie in the other, and I’m racing up Figueroa Boulevard in search of a speedier pace and a trash can. I can see one at the next corner. As Florence and I approach Annandale Elementary, where my wife until recently worked as school librarian, a class of 10-year-old crumb crunchers congregate on the sidewalk preparing to board a bus. Maybe they don’t move because they’re frozen by the sight of crazy-doggy-poop-man sprinting toward them. Shortening the leash in my right hand, outstretching my left hand at a distance as if it were holding what it is holding, I dodge deftly to the left, gracefuly skirting the edge of the bus, and my left hand passes the perimeter of the bus door at the precise moment the principal steps off the bus. Oh, shi…
I want to stop and and academically discuss with him why this is all Donald’s fault, that this is why you can’t let these damn kids graduate, but I opt for discretion, continuing my run north on Figueroa with a leash in my right hand, nothing in my left.