Disgusting activities:

Living in the City has unfortunately given me an eyeful of things I would rather never see or acknowledge occur. I love living in the City, don't get me wrong, and I have a high threshold for what I tolerate, but yesterday was simply over the edge. Now, understand this, I have seen a great number of unsightly things and have smelled an inordinate amount of disgusting fumes. I have witnessed people peeing in the streets, rearranging their underwear, and I've even seen one guy squatting next to a store and proceeding with a bowel movement that seriously threatened my ability to tolerate. But yesterday I witnessed an incident most harmful to my tolerance level and my ability to smile while walking the street.

Yesterday, while waiting at the bus stop a father pulled down the pants of a 2-3 year old boy, held his legs up in the air, and had him pee on the street at the stop. Middle of the day, waiting for the bus, teaching the child that it's ok to pee in public on the street. I'm sure one of the stores around there would have allowed a young child access to a bathroom if he had needed it badly enough. I'm sure there could have been more private alleys or places he could have taken his child to give the child a sense of right and wrong. But no, the child was taught that peeing at the bus stop was an appropriate and logical thing to do. They then proceeded to get on the bus and act like everything was normal.

I try my best to understand, appreciate, and struggle with the concerns of the homeless population in the City. I try my best to be compassionate and open to their plight. This father/son couple wasn't living off the streets that I could tell. They just were people who live in the City and have determined that certain things are acceptable around here.

As part of my struggle to understand, I also will say that I too have done my own amount of peeing in the outdoors, as we all have at some points in our lives. Oftentimes on long highway drives with no restrooms in sight, there was a need to go out on the side of the road or in the woods on camping trips. But these were always done with a sense of keeping out of the public sight as much as possible, behind a tree, behind a bush, peeing into the dirt or bush where it would be soaked up. I would never, ever consider peeing at a bus stop with many fellow passengers waiting patiently next to me. I would at least try to find some privacy somewhere. And I would never teach a child that such activity was acceptable. I do not understand how this father could do such a thing. Forgive me for this rant, but I needed to state my disgust and frustration.