time travel

Working with the public gives me a wide slice of humanity. I don't have to chase people down, clean up expired shut-ins, or pull guns on assholes like other branches of public employees, but I do talk down drug addicts, investigate trash-can-poopers, and listen to a stream of scandal and grief. One of our teens was killed in a terrible accident, and the neighbors who dragged him from the wreckage are still processing their horror. One of our missing patrons is rumored to have been involved in a shoot-out with police and has been on the run with a new haircut and a stolen car. Someone has been ordering fraudulent credit cards in their ex's name. One of our mentally ill patrons has just figured out he can get free movies due to his disability, and has been proselytizing to all his friends, so that we have had a lurching, clot-dropping stream of Walking Dead library visitors all week.

Sorry, no, 'Tin Tin' has already been checked out.

I realize this analogy seems harsh, but none of the normal hobos will go near these guys. Not sure where he found them.

My co-worker went to get the mail and stopped someone who was beating up a homeless guy on the street corner. She got in his face, told him off, got the cops, and called his mom. It was beautiful.

Meanwhile, the kid I pulled out of a pool in 9th grade is running for Senate. And his new album won a bunch of local awards. I am insufferably smug about how he's turned out - as if I'd done any work at all since whacking his head off the pool deck in 1993.

Also, my pen is poised over my time-travel to-do list, just in case he turns out to be an evil overlord, after all.


Yesterday, a teen fell off this bridge and died while trying to take a picture over the guardrail:

We have to drive through herds of tourists clogging the bridges every time we go to Costco. Seriously, visitors, they are fucking huge cliffs with raging waterfalls and rivers under them. There is mud, and slippery moss, and crumbling rocks, and one-lane roads where drivers will zoom around and scare you into losing footing. One of our patrons pulled this kid out of the water, our emergency guys brought him in, and my doctor declared him dead. Hopefully not on the same table I have to have my lady-business exam on. DO NOT PRANCE AROUND WITH CAMERAS ON THE EDGES OF CLIFFS, FFS.

Home, to my knitting and children and dinner. I like a calm and quiet life, because damn.