Here is a counterpoint that some of you may find interesting. About 15 years ago I was married, for just over a year. The short version of the story is that neither of us understood that she was an alcoholic, nor the ramifications thereof. Things didn't work out, she decided that she no longer wanted to be married to me.
For various reasons that made sense at the time, I moved in with my best friend, whose wife had left him a week before, and let my wife stay in the house in the hopes that we could work things out. The next day, she moved in her new boyfriend, and several other friends. All homeless kids. Some months later, I basically evicted them. Cleaning up, and there was a lot of cleaning up to do, I found all sorts of letters from their parents saying that they could come home at any time. I also found my dishes and cookware scattered all over the house and yard, weeks or months old food rotting on them. In addition, my house was basically trashed and it took far more work than I care to recount to clean up. If you really care for details google usenet for "the homeless are animals" and other posts by [email protected] in alt.peeves from the same time period. As a postscript, a few months later my house was burglarized. In addition to personal heirlooms (such as jewelry made by my father) they also stole the pentax photo gear that I had gotten from my father. I understand that there are a lot of homeless people who are good people, and who deserve pity and support. But, due to the actions of half a dozen homeless kids, when I see someone that is homeless I'm far more inclined that the reason is self inflicted than due to purely hard luck. Another, humorous but related, postscript: Several years ago, I saw a personal ad on craigslist that I found very intriguing. I spent a lot of time carefully crafting a reply, because for about every 20 cl ads that a guy answers, he may get one response. And I did, indeed, get a response to my letter. "Why yes, I am wonderful, that's why you married me". My ex had gone through a period of homelessness, eventually quit drinking, got her act together, got a real job and became a self sufficient member of society. -- The fastest way to get your question answered on the net is to post the wrong answer. Larry Colen [email protected] http://www.red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
