You Be The Judge
A mildly heartwarming story about how people buy their moms mother's day cards.
I was in the CVS and here were all these men, some tough looking, some scruffy, some a bit grungy picking out cards for their moms. With care.
Aw, everyone loves their mom.
OK, not really. But a lot of people.
They have moms at least.
A more heartwarming story about how a kind man gave a child part of his lunch
I idiotically picked my daughter up from school without remembering to bring her food. I know she is
always ravenous when I pick her up and I sometimes forget to bring her
anything. So I was almost late and was running past the apples and
bananas at the cafe stand near work on my way to the car with only
minutes to spare. All the time thinking as I run by "I neeeed that
apple. I'm going to neeeed that apple." I get to school. She asks me:
"Do you have an apple? Do you have a banana?' She never asks for a
banana. NEVER. Is she psychic or something? Especially attuned to my
guilt? How did she know to ask for the banana I did not get her?
Damnit, I think! I suck again! Daddy never forgets the banana! But aha! There is a gas station. A nice big convenience market laden gas station.
Wow. I've known this for some time since I cannot eat what most of America eats but wow. An entire store full of food that one cannot eat. There is one food in there that is not some kind of poison: Milk. They didn't even have overly sugared yogurt. Nothing. "Do you have an apple? Do you have a banana?" I asked plaintively.
They must of overheard me saying to her. "No, you cannot have the
peanut cookies! Nooooo! The peanut cookies are full of death. Death! I
tell you. Hydrogenation.
There was nothing to eat. I settled on some kind of misleadingly named strawberry nutrigrain bar.
I guess after hearing me say, "...wait let me look at the
label....noooooooo." about virtually every 'food' in the store, they
took pity on us. One of the guys behind the counter gave her his apple.
He had a banana too. The other worker tried to make him give me his
banana but I pretended not to hear. I did the polite thing of 'No, no we can't, etc. But ya know, when your kid is hungry and you are a bad mom for not bringing food for said kid, etc.'
We'll go and give the guy an apple at some point.
A Not At All Heartwarming Story About How Our Scary Neighbor Beat the Shit Out of Some Homeless Guy
We almost never sit on the couch. But for some reason we are sitting on the couch and I hear screaming and yelling. I look at the window and see one man standing menancingly over another man who has been knocked into some grass, face down. The standing man is in the process of beating up the man in the grass. Oddly, they are both shaven bald. My husband is about to run down but I realize that this is not a wise idea as there is a chance that the menancer--who has a goatee--is our extremely scary looking neighbor. Other people are getting involved at this point. There is a flock of witnesses with their cell phones out. Why piss off your apparently very violent neighbor unless it is absolutely necessary? (Bad, I know. I didn't know if it was our neighbor or not. But at that point we'd just be gawkers because a crowd had gathered.)
The police show up. The beaten man explains to the police that he was just walking with his shopping cart and eating a piece of pizza when out of nowhere this guy comes up to beat on him.
Reason--which we discover when the crazy ass car owner screeches up to scream some more seconds before the cops arise--it appears that the beater is mad that his victim has scratched his new car or something. Touched his car? No damage could be seen but he gestured wildly toward some invisible microscopic change in the paint's molecular structure.
Digression: The other day I tapped someone's bumper. It was a man in his 'new' truck. I did nothing to his bumper. But he menaced me and threatened me and tried to extort money from me. I urged him to call my insurance company! Yes! That is what insurance companies are for! Apparently, because my car touched his new car without causing any visible harm to his car I owed him some money. I'm sure if I'd been a man he'd have beaten me up. I'm telling you: He wanted to hurt me. I think calling someone on my cell phone protected me a bit perhaps. And that a lot of people were around.
People, if you are going to go apeshit batshit over a ding on your car or even mere contact between your car and anything other than air, I would recommend not getting a new car. Just a thought. Cars. They are driven through the world. They are not Faberge Eggs, these things.
So, the beaten man is bleeding all over the street, there are many sympathetic witnesses, the fire department comes. The fire department guys help the beaten guy retrieve his stuff from his grocery cart, the cops talk to the violent man and somehow ended up shaking his hand and letting him leave?
And the beaten up homeless man refuses the ambulance and limps away. He seemed to have lost something important in the bushes and spent some time looking for it but I don't know he found it.
The Fire Department decides to hose the blood off the street.
I had hopes, after the scary mf-ers fancy ass American Chevrolet or whatever the fuck it was turned the corner that he wasn't our neighbor after all. We were like "whew, maybe it wasn't him after all.' Then our hearts kind of sank as we saw that shiny new car sitting in the driveway two houses down a few hours later.
So you be the judge. Humans, evil motherfuckers or lost souls? Generous and kind or the scourge of the earth?

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