Jim was out walking his dog on a Friday morning.  He came home from the liberal arts college a few miles away where he was a junior every weekend to spend time with the parents who were paying for his adventure in higher education.  To pay them back, he did little chores for them, such as walk the little, yellow, sausage-shaped dog for a mile or so.  He was wearing running shorts and a basketball jersey that showed off his unmuscular shoulders and biceps.

            He and the dog, Newton (officially, Netwon, since Jim’s father had misspelled Newton on the humane society forms), were still a few blocks from home when Jim drew up, seeing, coming around the corner a few hundred feet ahead, Samantha and her dog.  Samantha was in three of Jim’s classes, and he had a tremendous crush on her, the kind of crush he thought he had outgrown when he had been promoted to middle school.  They were sort of friends, but he had never gotten up the nerve to ask her out.

            Her little white terrier yanked at the leash, but Samantha was talking on her cell phone and didn’t seem to notice that the dog was choking itself, trying to run up to meet Newton.

            Newton, for his part, had taken this propitious moment to squat and defecate in the grass just next to the sidewalk.  Jim, who hadn’t even noticed until it was too late, looked down at the pile, glistening in the morning sun tauntingly as Samantha approached.

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