Louise walked down the street artfully avoiding piles of dog shit. From a distance it looked like she was doing an intricate ballet. There seemed to be a lot of dogs with irritable bowel syndrome. This was disgusting. From what Louise gathered, since it was raining so hard last night, a lot of people decided to not pick up after their dogs.

Louise hated that. She didn’t mind the dogs but hated the people that couldn’t handle the responsibility of owning them. It seemed wrong to have a big dog in the small apartments of this town. The owners seemed to get them because they were chic. The “in” item to have this season.

Moving along, sidestepping shit, she scanned the sidewalk ahead looking for errant feces. All seemed clear. It was like walking though a minefield. She increased her stride and headed around the corner. There she was, Louise’s dreaded ex roommate, former friend, Alex.

With a dog.

Louise just smiled and hurried along, nodding a hello as Alex’s dog began to squat. Louise noticed that Alex didn’t seem to have anything in her hands to pick up after the dog. Oh she hated Alex. And she hated Alex’s dog. A small foo foo dog. A dog that would not protect you should you need it. These types of dogs are the kind that gets you into trouble.

Louise always thought of these dogs as being either ‘kickers or steppers’, meaning they are the kind of dog that you either kick or step on. Not that Louise would do anything like that, but those dogs are so irritating sometimes.

As Louise was walking away she turned to see what stage Alex’s dog was going through. No stage at all actually. The dog was done. Alex was about 20 feet from the steaming pile on the sidewalk as Louise made note of another mine to avoid should she come back this way later.

She was trying so hard to have a good day but with all this shit around her, both literally and figuratively, it seemed like a losing battle. She was trying to put her financial situation behind her. Her lousy dates that she had been on, she was desperately keen to forget. Work was a drag, no challenges, just the same boring routine.

Louise wondered if this was what it was all about. Life. Avoiding the piles of shit on the road of life ahead of you. She laughed silently to herself as she thought of a saying that she had heard in her neighborhood a few times over the years, ‘Oh He really stepped in shit’.

Apparently it meant that someone had some good luck happen to them. Usually involved winning the lottery or some sum of money and sometimes said with a tinge of jealousy. Louise started to laugh to herself. It really was a funny saying. When she thought about it, that if it were true, there’d be a lot of people stepping in the piles she so artfully avoided.

Above her, a few floors up, a tenant was trying to adjust an air conditioner in the window. One hand was on a window, the other on the far end of the unit. Louise was walking directly below when it slipped.

Louise was hit and landed face first into a pile of never before seen dog shit. So much for good luck.