So What Is It That You Do?

by Susan Israel

That has to be the worst question anyone can ever ask me because I know what their reaction will be when I tell them the truth; I clean up shit. Yep, that’s what me and my coworkers do from morning to night; donned in our HazMat suits, we pull our van into driveways, the one emblazoned with the logo of Super Duper Pooper Scooper, and unload our rakes and shovels and bags and special lights to illuminate where Sir Barksalot deposited his loads that the homeowners are too gosh darned lazy to pick up with bags themselves, but hey, I’m getting paid for this! It’ll help put me through college. It’s just the looks I get when people ask what I do kill me, so I finally found my way around that; “I do landscaping,” I tell them. 

“Is it lucrative?”

“I clean up.”

Boom. Instant respect.

Susan Israel is the author of two crime novels, Over My Live Body and Student Bodies (The Story Plant). She lives in Connecticut.