My wife Tasha recently rejected my friendly and warm-hearted invitation to play. I expected she would, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. Or maybe you can. Here’s what happened:

GeeGee and Slinky are excited because Tasha has decided to join us on our morning beach walk. (I feed them, water them, walk them, and pick up their poop, but they like her better. She’s the Alpha of our little pack.) It’s a beautiful morning. The sky and water ripple with pinks, yellows, and reds to announce the sun’s return.

Strolling toward the beach—I’ve got both dogs on a split leash—I playfully yell “catch” and fling Tasha a bag of dog poop. A bit surprised, she avoids it. Shockingly, she did not attempt to catch it.

“You threw poop at me!”

“I threw A Bag of poop at you. That’s not the same as throwing poop at you.”

“You threw poop at me!”

“So you could catch it. You didn’t catch it.”

“You threw poop at me!”

I picked up the bag, and we had a lovely walk.

Invitation To Play Wrap-Up

When I was a kid, we played catch with anything we could throw, including bags of dog poop. It almost always started with a shout of “catch,” although the invitation to play was often less overt. Sometimes, stuff just came flying your way unannounced. Maybe you saw it coming. Maybe it hit you in the face. Those were good times.

But Tasha is not one of the young hellions with which I misspent my youth, and it was presumptuous of me to assume she would want to play catch with a bag of dog poop. We’ve been together for nearly 40 years, and it has never happened before.

Play requires consent. It’s perfectly fine to choose not to play catch with a bag of poop.

In early learning settings, kids should be able to reject any invitation to play, no matter who issues the invitation. You should not force participation.

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