Waiting for the bus today....

I had a wait of eight minutes for my transfer. We have these bus stops, that shelter you if it rains, and so on, and whoever was there before left all their trash on the bench, even though there is a trash can two steps outside of it.

So I dumped the trash, but there were wet spots where the coffee spilled out.

Along comes a guy and nearly sat in the mess. So I pointed out that that wasn't a good place, and we got to talking.

The first subject was about what 'the man on the street' is talking about these days. Two kids, 14 and 16... got shot some days ago in a burg in upper Austria, trying to rob a supermarket. The fourteen year old was shot in the back. The sixteen year old got shot through both thighs. Seemingly, they were working for a Rumanian guy who put them up to it. And seemingly, he had accomplices.

Can you please tell me why the first thing that shot into my head was 'Oliver Twist' ?

Tja, we have come so FAR since Dicken's day... Really. Not.

So this GUY was going on.... but blamed it on the parents, and said that the people now in their Fifties were the worst in the worrrrrlllld. 'How can you let a fourteen year old child be out at three o'clock in the MORNING????'

He was outraged that the kid had been shot dead in the back, but more angry with the parents. Apropos, the man is 70, had a very physically hard job in his life and is decent, and interested in what goes on in the world....

But what he said kicked off a memory in my addled head. From the Sixties. And they used to have this thing on the tee-vee.... Bong! It is eleven p.m. Do you know where your children are?

So I told him about it, explaining why... He thought that was like Zeus throwing a lightning bolt and illuminating your brain, hey.... He thought they should do that here.

So we talked a bit more, till the bus came, and cordially wished one another a nice Sunday.

I guess parenting is a blessing and a curse as well. Peter and I are agahst at how kids are out on the streets very late at an age when we used to have to be in bed at eight p.m. And we didn't get to be out till midnight till we were eighteen.

That wasn't a bad thing.. although we hated it.

Whatever, the local media is feeding on this. Big time.

But the guy asked the right question, and no one is gonna answer it. Where were the parents in all this shit? Too busy trying to work to FEED them?

And as to Dickens.... well, there must be a Fagin who pulls the strings, and the guy who put those kids in there was just another Bill Sykes.... with or without the pit bull.

Just sayin'