While visiting my granny yesterday, I was asked if I would get Mr. Load to come over and look at her toilet in the front bathroom because it was leaking. So tonight when he got home from work, we went over there so he could check it out. After a quick examination, he determined that the innards of the tank are simply old and worn out. The gaskets are starting to crumble and the water is just seeping out under the tank or something. I just take his word for it that it's no big deal. He said that he would stop at Lowes on the way home tomorrow, pick up a new assembly, and get her fixed right up. So that's the end of that.

So we went into the living room to sit and talk with Nanny for a bit. Usually when I visit with her, it's just the two of us, and it is not uncommon -- in fact, it is quite ordinary -- for our conversations to include pooping, the lack of pooping, or some complication thereof. But since I had my other half with me tonight and the two are still quite formal with one another due to not really having had much interaction, I assumed that there would be no talk of that.

But I was wrong. Poop did manage to become the subject of conversation -- but not her poop. This time it was dog poop that would become the hot topic of the hour.

Nanny began by telling us about a new dog in the neighborhood that has decided that the best place to put a steaming pile of poo is on the edge of the lawn just off her front porch. There are landscaping rocks, flowerbeds, and bushes that make maneuvering for an eight-eight-year-old woman difficult at best, and the consistency of these quart-size piles is like soft serve ice cream. She said she has to wait several days to clean up a pile so it can "firm up some" before she is able to successfully scoop it out of the rocks without too much mess.

But Nanny said that every time she scoops up a pile, she remembers something that her sister-in-law had done many years ago in Florida. As I listened to her telling us this story, it became clear to me that I am a PoopReporter by blood. And I am also related (by marriage) to a turd terrorist.

Nanny's brother was burned very badly from the waist down in a gasoline fire when he was seventeen, and this resulted in his legs becoming drawn up, twisted, and unusable. But he was not crippled. He walked with his hands for the rest of his life. He would sit Indian style, put his hands down on the floor on each side, lift his butt off the ground, and "swing" himself forward. He developed such strength in his arms and upper body that he was able to climb up onto things, and he got around so well that he made a living as a mechanic. He lived his life like a normal person. The only difference was the way he walked.

He married a woman named Grace. They moved to Florida after he retired from his job. The people who lived next door to them had a Great Dane. The dog would deposit massive piles of poop in my great uncle's yard, and Aunt Grace would had to clean up.

One day Aunt Grace went over to the neighbor's house and very politely explained to them about the unique way that her husband had to get around, and how unpleasant it was for him to have to put up with cow-pile-like heaps of feces on the walkway where his hands had to go. She asked them to please not allow their dog to do its business on their property.

One night, after a few weeks of still scooping the dog's nasty poops up from their walkway, they were on their way home from dinner. They pulled in the driveway just in time to see the big dog being let out of the house next door. It meandered around in his own yard for a few minutes, peeing on a bush here and there, and then marched right over onto my uncle's lawn and shat out a big pile right on the sidewalk.

Well, this was the breaking point for my aunt. She got out of the car, walked over to the porch, picked up her pooper-scooper, walked out to the fresh pile, scooped it up and walked over to the neighbor's yard. The dog was back inside the screened-in porch of his masters' home, and the dog's owners were sitting in their wicker chairs there out on the porch enjoying the nice Florida summer evening.

Grace simply said, "I think this belongs to you." And with a flick of her wrist, she sent the stinky pile of poo from the scooper splattering right through the screen onto the dog, the furniture, and the people.

According to Nanny, nobody said a word. My aunt just casually walked back to her house and went inside. There was never another pile of poop from that great Dane on my great uncle's lawn again.

So getting back to the original point of my grandma's story: she said that in order to restore peace to her relationship with her own neighbor in regards this current dog situation, she might have to give them a little dose of Grace. I just smiled.