POOP

I stepped in poop last Saturday. As you can imagine, it was not pleasant. Let me tell you how it happened. I was returning from the grocery store, I believe I had bought some oranges. My apartment building has several secured entrances but the one I used was in the retail area of the complex I live in. I stepped up to the door and placed my key fob on the sensor and waited for it to beep. At this point, I wasn’t aware I had stepped on poop. I tend to watch where I’m going but I honestly didn’t expect poop right in front of a door. Who leaves or poops in front of a door? Anyways, once sensor beeped and the little LED turned green, I pulled the door open and that’s when I started to step into the corridor. I noticed my back foot lost traction and slipped but I continued through the door while I looked down at my foot.

At first, I thought I had slipped on a small pile of leaves as the door closed behind me. As I took two more steps, I realized that was not a pile of leaves. My right foot was leaving brown footprints behind on the linoleum of the corridor. I desperately wanted the brown stuff coming off my right shoe to be mud but I knew it wasn’t mud. A mixture of anger and panic flooded through me. Who the hell would leave poop right next to a door leading into an apartment building? Was it dog poop? Given some of the sketchy people I see hanging around the retail area, I couldn’t discount it being human poop either. I knew I could bring my poopy foot into the elevator with me. Instead of going left to the elevators, I turned right and went into the stairwells, all the while trying not to touch the ground with my poopy foot. I knew on a lower floor stairwell, there were some old rugs and doormats leading to the garbage room. For better or worse, I was gonna rub as much poop as I could on those rugs and doormats as there wasn’t a place to hose down my shoe. I went two floors down the stairs and rubbed my shoe clean as best as I could. Luckily, no one interrupted my poop cleaning. The bad news was that I had completely stepped on the poop with all my weight, which explained the slipping and the fact a large portion of the waffle sole was embedded with poop. Imagine an Eggo waffle but instead of delicious butter and syrup filling the crevices it was horrendous poop; that was my right shoe.

With a considerable amount of poop crammed into the sole of my shoe, I gingerly made my way back to the elevators to get back into my apartment. When the elevator came, there were already people in it and I did my best not to let on that I was carrying feces with me. When my floor arrived, I again adopted this weird walk to prevent my right shoe from making too much contact with the carpet. Just outside my apartment, I unlaced my right shoe and took it off, placing it on its side so the poopy sole wasn’t making contact with anything. I went inside, put down my groceries and then placed a paper towel down. I opened the door again, grabbed my poop shoe and put it on the paper towel.

It was at this point, I had a decision to make. Part of me just wanted to make dinner and watch hockey, and deal with the poop later. It was contained and wasn’t contaminating any other surfaces. Another part of me was still disgusted that these shoes I loved had moist poop on it. Also, I believed it was going to be easier to clean if the poop was still moist as opposed to dry. The clean side of me won out and I realized I had to clean the shoe immediately. It would have been easier to clean the shoe in a sink or my bathtub but there was no way in hell I’d let poop get near those places. I had to settle for the next best thing.

I went out on my balcony which has a hole for rainwater drainage. I had put on some gloves and brought with me a water spray bottle full of hot water, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and some paper towels. I used the water spray bottle to fire tight streams of water into the waffle of the shoe sole to dislodge the poop. This was working ok, except that it seemed like the high pressure of the water was almost atomizing the poop particles and sending them into the air. The water could only do so much so I had to get a pointy BBQ skewer to really get deep into the crevices and dig out some poop. Bleh. When it seemed like I had cleaned out as much as I could, I poured isopropyl alcohol all over the entire sole in an effort to disinfect it. It was at this moment, I hoped that the poop was from a human because dogs can have worms sometimes and the thought of having parasitic poop worms on my shoe really grossed me out.

I suppose the shoe is now clean but I haven’t worn them since. There is definitely a mental block there. Man, maybe I should just get another pair! Please watch where you step my loyal readers, I don’t wish this upon any of you.