The Re-employment Chronicles
So here I am on the job at my new job. A thousand miles from the home, the wife and the family. A thousand miles from everything I really care about except for making a living so I can help take care of everyone I really care about. And that’s why I’m here and they’re there.
We’ve been fortunate over the last ten years. By almost sheer serendipity we put ourselves into a pretty nice community. An A-market town at the edge of the Dallas MetroPlex, a little sleepy, big enough to draw the hipper shops and restaurants and small enough to not draw the crime. In fact, our state-of-the-art police force has done a spectacular job. Not a Barney Fife among them, they are really quite serious. L.A. adept at swarming and capturing the marauding bands of toilet paper tossers, mailbox smashers and hood ornament thieves. We sleep safe in the knowledge that our trees are unmolested, our windows unsoaped, our front doors unburning-pooped. Secure in that knowledge . . . we sleep safe.
And then came the call . . . the one you hope will never come but just know somehow will come one day — if you’re away enough days. It’s the one that goes . . . just calling to let you know Jack found a hobo sleeping on the front porch today.
A what? A hobo? On my front porch. Do we suddenly live in the Mission District. And where are all the peace officers? Running a DWT (driving while teen) sting over by the high school no doubt.
You know it’s that sort of call that really just makes you want to go home and check things out, look under the beds, in the closets, behind the shower curtain and here I am 1000 miles from home alone and trying to take care of everything for everyone I really care about just like I’m supposed to. . . just like I was taught. And yet I can’t take care of a sleepy hobo. I can’t because I’m here and they’re there and I just think that sucks.
A hobo. . . on my front porch. What the hell.