Toddler Stick Regression

I wrote a while back about my shoe philosophy completing a full lap back to toddlerhood — slip-ons, elastic laces, the whole embarrassing circle. If you missed it, Confessions of an Adult Toddler has the full account. I picked up a new pair of slip-on shoes recently, no laces at all, and it got me thinking about the other thing I’ve regressed into, which is arguably worse: I’ve started collecting sticks.

My kids did this constantly when they were little. Didn’t matter where we were walking — they’d end up with a fistful of sticks, for no reason either of them could have articulated if you’d asked. And a few weeks ago I realized this is exactly what I’ve been reduced to at this stage of my life. Except unlike them, I actually have a reason.

I walk our dog Hobbes on the rail trail near us, and like anyone with a dog, I’m supposed to clean up after him. Here’s my problem with that: taking dog waste, sealing it in a plastic bag — even a biodegradable one — and putting it in a trash can bothers me more than it should. Something that would break down in a week on its own instead gets bagged and sent off to a landfill where it won’t. We’re not talking about a crowded dog park here; this is a rail trail in a not-densely-populated area. Hobbes, to his credit, already does his business well off the path, off in the tall grass, out of anyone’s way.

So my solution — and I fully expect people to have opinions about this — is that I don’t bag it. I flick it further off the trail with a stick, into the woods, out of sight, and let it do what it was going to do anyway. Is that the textbook-correct answer? Probably not. But my honest gut read is that it’s a smaller footprint than a plastic bag, biodegradable or not, sitting in a landfill — and it’s definitely smaller than the bags I regularly see abandoned on the trail by people who apparently couldn’t be bothered to finish the job they started.

This is where the stick collecting kicks in properly. Some sticks strip clean and smooth easily, and once I noticed that, I started hanging onto the good ones — a little rotating stockpile so I’m not always reaching for a fresh one. And the sticks have picked up a second job: I use one as a gentle guide for Hobbes, a nudge instead of a hand, if he gets too locked onto something or tangled in his leash and needs a little correction to lift a leg or refocus.

So here we are: no-tie shoes and a stick collection. I don’t know what stage comes after this. Probably soft foods.