HUMOR

Failure By Agreement

The wickedest voice

Daniel Williams
Human Parts
Published in
6 min readMar 11, 2023

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by author

Walking our dog, Blossom, means you stop and stop as she drags herself over the entire planet, one sniff at a time. The first sniff leads to the next and the next. Chain sniffing. She slides her nose along the ground, building the fecal puzzle of a thousand lives.

My wife says sniffing is how a dog builds up its self-esteem, so how can I deny Blossom her sniffs? I cannot. I would never interrupt a system so simple, efficient, and wonderful. If sniffing my neighbors’ droppings made me feel good about myself, guess what I’d be doing right now.

Also, we recently learned sniffing has a laxative effect on dogs. Smells go in, waste comes out.

And yes, I’d still do it. If all I had to do for self-esteem was sniff the neighbors’ droppings and surrender some of my own, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I would do just about anything to esteem myself.

The million stops of the Blossom train give me plenty of time to think.

What do I think about? The same thing you do:

Insults.

Specifically, I think about the times I’ve been called worthless in one way or another.

A person hears some plan of mine and labels me a dud for thinking of this plan. Or they receive…

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Daniel Williams
Daniel Williams

Written by Daniel Williams

A poverty-stricken, soft Batman by night. Illustrator and writing teacher by day. Previously: McSweeney’s, Slackjaw.