You want to shake her hand.

Not re­ally. Eleven year olds are so dis­gust­ing. Al­ways the snot on the sweaty fin­gers!

You won­der if you’re ac­tu­ally think­ing of five year olds, but for you, they all kind of blend to­gether.

She’s not so bad as that, you sup­pose. And you need to shake her hand. It’s for the cam­eras.

You reach out a hand for hers, but an oaf trips into you.

You fall, all the way off the thank­fully near-ground stage, and the girl has the temer­ity to gig­gle.

It’s not funny!

FLASH! Flash flash flash! The cam­eras do not share your view of the sit­u­a­tion. They find it as­tound­ingly hi­lar­i­ous.

You dust your­self off, and make a fresh at­tempt, flash­ing a care­fully cal­cu­lated po­litely em­bar­rassed smile as you reach to­wards her.

But she looks at you in­cred­u­lously as you no­tice some­thing amiss. What’s that on your hands? Brown. Wet. Dis­gust­ing.

Shit. You’re on grass. The pre­vi­ous in­hab­i­tant of your spot: a funny lit­tle Shih Tzu.

Shit.

You can see the head­lines now: “Mayor of­fers The De­tec­tive a Shit Hand!”

Sounds like you cheated her in poker. You wish that were the case. You’d have a higher chance of re­cov­ery.

But maybe it’s not over yet. Maybe you can sal­vage this.

You search for a un­funny joke some­where be­tween “Shih Tzu” and “Shits You.”

It’s not com­ing quickly enough. You try to stall.

You hold up your hand as if to say: no, def­i­nitely don’t shake it! I un­der­stand, and not only do I un­der­stand, I in­sist I keep this shitty hand as far away from you as pos­si­ble!

The girl rubs her hand in her sweaty armpit, reaches a fin­ger into her nose, and flicks snot at you.

The flashes light you into a su­per­nova.

Your ca­reer, how­ever, is a black hole.