Too Legit to Quit

Last night as I was walking home, I passed a gaggle of overdressed teenage girls standing about 10 feet away from a homeless man and his dog.

"I don't want just a homeless person. I want, like, a legit homeless person," whined one of the girls, looking in the man's direction. She appeared to be the leader of the troop; the other girls clucked around her, nodded in agreement, and put their cameras down dejectedly. They went clicking down the street in search of more squalid pastures.

I spent the rest of my 15-minute walk home alternately angry and amused at their audacious idiocy. What is a legit homeless person, I wondered? Do they have to have dreads? Smell like urine and feces? Look hungry and hopeless? Be doing drugs on the street? Does their dog have to look emaciated and rabid? Should they be crying uncontrollably at their lot, or just muttering unintelligibly? What about the new wave of homeless people who lost their abodes because of the recession? Are they automatically discounted because it's not 'legit'?

I went to a baby shower this weekend, where I could only hope that the baby girl to come doesn't grow up to be the type of teen who trolls for human misery. Before the shower, I dutifully and excitedly went shopping for a gift -- I have six nephews; shopping for a girl seemed like fun. No. Babies R Us is, I think, the first test of parenthood. Who organizes their stores? I'll admit, I'm not a great shopper (my sister can attest), but I only lasted about five minutes before becoming completely overwhelmed and overheated. Why are there two different rows of baby washcloths, for instance? And why are the swaddly-things in different locations? Better yet, why are babies now sleeping in sacks? It's like we're raising an entire generation to live in the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. Every time I thought I located something on the registry, I'd match up the sku numbers like I had won the lottery, only to realize that the last two numbers didn't match. When I finally located a harried worker for help, she chirped, "Oh, that's right over here." We then walked across the entire store (any further and we would have been outside), and even she couldn't find the promised item. I briefly contemplated telling her the true meaning of 'right over here' but was too tired.

By the time I was finished, I was actually sweating. I found Dawson in the parking lot (he had wisely chosen not to come in), and flopped heavily into the passenger seat.

"Never!" I claimed.

"Never," he answered. And then Virginia climbed into my lap.