Bacon-wrapped, pitted dates. Oh, yum! Devoured a pair of them while out with Kathleen and a friend of hers last night.These darlings were served at a reception after a very current affairsy event during which everything was discussed from the Cubs' choice of a new manager to the negative tone of recent campaign commercials to whether women are the natural audience for Jackass 3. It made my geeky heart sing.
Got a little pissed at Kathleen, though. And I suppose, she at me. For as the three of us headed up the empty city street to her car, a rather aggressive panhandler approached us. He crossed the street and walked alongside us for more than a block. It was getting out of hand, even as Kathleen was rifling through her purse to give him change, and a pair of Chicago cops appeared on Segways (which are really very neat, by the way) and told us he was fine, and him to keep going.
This bothered me because I have seen police turn a benign blind eye to homeless on many occasions. I'm going to assume that this particular gentlemen was well known to the police for his stick-to-it-iveness.
I told Kathleen she shouldn't have responded to his conversation and certainly should never have opened her purse on a city street like that. She told me that he was a case of "there but for the grace of God" and that she certainly would speak to him and treat him like a human.
Fellow bloggers, you know I respect the humanity of the homeless. But I worry about my friend's open spirit. Especially after Kathleen came through her recent cancer scare with the best possible outcome! How awful if she survived that, only to get mugged! I told her that I wished that since she locked her car when she wasn't in it, she would give as much consideration to the safety of her physical self as she does her stuff.
