Three Vignettes from Shoreline, a small satellite city on the NW border of Seattle

There’s a mentally unstable young bearded White fella dancing, leaping, and spinning around in the intersection of N. 155th and Aurora 99 near our apartment complex in the south-central Shoreline neighborhood of Westminster. He’s acting like a dumb ass goofball. The man dramatically waves around a cardboard sign as he squats and jumps as he begs for money. He acts silly because maybe he thinks his showing off out in the streets looks cute, but all he’s really doing is pissing off every driver around as he frolics right out there in the middle of the road as if he’s up on stage. At least he got some pants on, a pair of blue tropical-print board shorts. And they’re pulled up, too. Some folks out on the streets don’t even have their britches up.

Had noticed him earlier as I drove uphill to the pharmacy at Walgreens. Passed him crouching at the corner of McDonalds munching fiercely on whatever food he got a hold of. He chewed in a hurry as he peered all around with feral intensity. Reminded me of a wild beast backed into a corner and about to pounce up into your face. 

Drove into the parking lot at Walgreens and stopped. Parked. Garbage was strewn around the store on the Shoreline side of the Seattle boundary. Most of it was the kind usually associated with the trash left behind by homeless people and too many lazy ass bus riders who don’t give a shit about much of anything anymore. Not just metro riders either. Saw plenty of people pull up in cars, park, open their doors, and toss handfuls of garbage out across the pavement. A primal urge rose up, a desire to slam my car into theirs and dart over and smash them in their stupid fucking heads with … something … a caste-iron granny skillet, and, of course, the feelings pass and I shrug and let it all go like my parents, my teachers, my therapists, and the authorities have showed us over the decades. Yes? Pick your battles. Not worth going to prison over. No right to play god. We aren’t in their shoes. Practice acceptance, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, and agape. Yeah, I get it. Still wanna kick their careless, apathetic, dumb, stupid asses, tho.

There was a young White lady in Walgreens with longish blonde hair, dressed like a hooker in a tight pink stretchy outfit. She’s dirty and bruised. Maybe she’d been evicted from those two sleazy motels the cops shut down the other day on North Aurora for human trafficking, sex slavery, drug dealing, rapes, illegal prostitution, violence, shootings, and even a murder. Minors barely into their teens were being forced into prostitution. There pimps operated them out of the Seattle Inn and the Emerald Motel. Some pimps were teenagers themselves. All those hookers, however, had and have to go somewhere. Saw this woman moments earlier while waiting for the traffic lights to turn green on Aurora. She’d lugged an enormous tote bag full of her belongings across the street. Ah, gosh, I feel sad, curious, frustrated, and resigned. Wouldn’t it be so much better to legalize, regulate, and tax prostitution? Seems having licensed, adult professional sex workers would be a good idea, yes? What would the consequences, however, for all the illegal ones and their criminal pimps, especially the minors?

Here she was again, the woman in stretchy pink who crossed the street with all her belongings, now in Walgreens, bent over the check-out counter speaking agitatedly. She desperately tried to get the cashier to convert a wad of bills into … smaller bills? Didn’t make any … sense. I couldn’t hear them well. Difficult to understand. Hard of hearing anyway, I am. But the cashier, of an East Asian ethnicity, a woman who struggled to speak English clearly, could not understand the young White woman either. She quickly got frustrated, saw a line of other customers forming behind the dirty, bruised lady, and tried to wave the assumed-hooker away out the door. The hooker lady grew more desperate and tearful. All this transpired in seconds as I walked slowly down the aisle past the counter. Walked slowly because my low back and knees hurt like hell from chronic injuries. OMG what are we to do? What are we to do? I texted my wife about this. My wife and I are both messed up as it is, lol but not LOL, as we have our own problems piling up, but at least we aren’t like those fellow humans. Our fellow humans.

Makes our squabbles over messes in the closets seem utterly frivolous by comparison. Continue reading →