This is telling you more than you need to know about my life, but just about every evening I take my dog for what we affectionately term the “poop walk.” We go maybe a mile and a half, during which he waits until we’re next to what he considers the largest accumulation of people we’re likely to find given the weather conditions and time in the evening, then he does his business right in the street. (Side note: He’s a big dog who does Warren-Buffet size business.) This forces me to stick my hand in a bread bag and pick up his droppings while saying, “Sorry. My dog loves an audience,” to the polite chuckle of the people gathered. One recent night we hadn’t passed anyone at all. I mean, he was walking with his back knees together waiting, hoping. Then he saw a car sitting on the side of the road with its headlights on. Yes, it was good and dark, so what does he do? He stops maybe ten feet in front of the car, its headlights making it seem like we’re on a Broadway stage, and he squats for his big performance. I stand there like an idiot, pick up his business, then I kid you not, I bowed on behalf of the both of us. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear a group of high school kids in the car laughing at my life.
I share this story not to elicit your envy of my glamorous evenings. No, I share it because something happens to me on our walks when summer turns to fall and it goes from light to dark. Like tonight. It was richly dark—moonless, cool, but still a little humid. We walked and my dog did his business next to a couple of neighbors talking at one of their mailboxes. (“Sorry. My dog loves an audience…” Polite chuckle.) We walked on, and there was no one else out. No cars going by. Nothing. It was peacefully quiet. And whenever it gets like that I start to see us human beings differently.
Most of the blinds were closed and curtains pulled on the neighborhood houses, so we couldn’t see in many front windows from the street. Occasionally, there was a TV on or someone going into or out of a kitchen. I passed house after house, and I couldn’t help but think—each house is its own world. There are things going on, lives being lived in there that I know nothing about.
Our walks take us down several streets on which I don’t know a single person. And somehow that seems significant. In the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, life was hard but people knew one another. Connection was inherent to community life. Everyone relied on the blacksmith and the general store owner and the sheriff, and each farm had seed and food to share with those in need. There was likely a church or two, some very occasional entertainment, and a town doctor who was probably paid in chickens and beef jerky.
No, those days weren’t idyllic, and plenty of people were left out or even shut out, but there’s something about that kind of community that’s appealing. Today, living in a community means something very different. Many of us “neighbors” have jobs with indistinguishable titles (“I’m the Associate Director of Inertia and Proximate Client Interactions at Norsetacular Enterprises,” leaving us to ask, “So what exactly do you do?”) And none of us really needs each other. Entire neighborhoods are like Crate & Barrel stores where everything in them is interesting but not a single item (or person) is necessary. (If the zombie apocalypse hit, would you run for Crate & Barrel?) We don’t need one another, so we don’t talk. We use apps like Nextdoor to give us the illusion we’re talking with our neighbors as we ask questions about the police presence on this road or if anyone’s seen our escaped dog (who’s easy to catch because he poops whenever he gets near a group of people). But we aren’t actually talking to one another.
The whole thing makes me think my dog’s job title isn’t “Pooper Extraordinaire” but something more akin to “Coordinator of Neighborhood Relations.” Annoying as he is, I wind up saying hello to neighbors I might otherwise pass by without a word. Sometimes I even stop and chat (bag of warm poo in hand), learning a little something about what an “Assistant Intra-Store Assets Reduction and Proportion Analyst” does. And the walls of our houses feel a little thinner.
Ultimately, I have this feeling we’re becoming more isolated year by year (and COVID hasn’t helped). It seems social media, binge-watching, and the general pace of life have made us less connected, less interested in one another. So if it takes standing in the street holding my dog’s business in a baggie to break that down a little, I’m willing to be the guy who does it—even if it’s my dog who’s really the brains behind (so to speak) this revolution.