Encyclopedia Brown and the case of the striped patio

It was the summer of 1997, and my family was enjoying the "salad years", as they call them. Our two boys were 6 and 3. We had built a nice covered patio that provided a shaded haven in our back yard. We had some cherry trees for shade and a nice green lawn.


Our oldest son had his first two wheeled bicycle. Since we didn't trust the street traffic in front of the house we had figured a way for our oldest to ride his bike on a small loop in the back yard. The route went longways across the patio, around the metal shed, through the two cherry trees, and back around to the patio to start again. There was a small rut worn in the lawn after a few weeks of riding, but we were happy with the kids being outside.


During this time, as with all the rest of our married life, we had at least one dog.


The challenge of the backyard riding loop had some conflict with the lawn area where the dog(s) would relieve themselves of their previously digested food. Piles of this scattered the yard.


Although I tried to keep the yard clean, there were instances when bicycle tire met with pile, and the brown mess became strewn all about. Filled tire tread became a rotating applicator on the surface of the concrete. There was an array of light brown striping all across the patio.


Determined to keep this situation from happening, I became the daily cleaner of the yard, as well as the bike tires and the patio surface. I scrubbed that patio with soapy water and a push broom. I felt that for the happiness of our boys, and the cleanliness of our yard and house, I had succeeded in this master plan.

As the days went on I realized that these stripes were reappearing on the patio, and at an alarming rate! I went back out, scrubbed the patio again, and cleaned all the dog residue from the yard. We are good to go once again.

A few days later I noticed the brown stripes happening again. Confused as to how this was happening I decided to view the process of the boy's actions, instead of trying to figure out how it was happening from the final result. I waited for our boy to go outside and ride his bike, and watched from behind the curtain at the patio door.

What I saw I could not have deduced as any part of my curious puzzle. There was the boy, making his laps through the yard, leaning over the handlebars with a keen eye on the front tire of the bicycle. With the tactile concentration of a Kamikaze diving his Zero towards a prime military target at full speed, he was deliberately hitting every single dog pile in sight.

Ever since then I have learned to never assume that any puzzle or problem has any elements that think or perform in a logical manner. In life, always factor in for the illogical. And, while you are at it, you should always factor in for dealing with lots of dog piles.