leavings raze on the rear windshield of a white pickup truck there's a full-colour decal. it'll show you a bald man clutching a shovel. you'll see a second man wearing a blue baseball cap, holding a red sack in his left hand. both men are smiling. between the two of them is the name of their dog waste disposal company, and on the side of their truck is a question in the form of a dumb pun: "is poop a pain in your grass?" maybe you see that and you laugh. then you learn the man with the hat and the red sack co-owns the company with his best friend. he spent his whole life wanting to be a dad, and when he got his wish, his three-month-old son died because he was born with a heart that wasn't strong enough to keep him alive. the man thought his heart might stop too. but it didn't. seven years after that, his wife left him. she moved to manitoba when their daughter was just a fetus — a little person still being made, with arms and legs and fingernails and toes and a larynx that wasn't yet ready to let her make a sound. he stayed here. he got laid off. things fell apart. so he started his own business cleaning up the messes made by animals that belong to larger animals who can't take care of their own kind. he uses the money he makes to visit his daughter. she's almost four now. twice a month he meets her at the confluence of two rivers, a thousand miles from the city he sleeps in, and her smile fills him with everything he thought he'd lost. because there are people in this world who will wade through fields of shit to get to the ones they love. that man isn't a joke. he's a superhero. 220325 what's it to you? who go blather from