A Disturbing Similarity

There's construction going on at UMC right now that's right on my route to go from the lab to the main hospital. I pass by the site almost every day. Today, I saw a pile of stuff on the site. It contained: a flannel shirt, gloves, a big thermos, a lunch box, and several things I couldn't identify. Then I looked over into the rest of the site and saw a construction worker wearing: a helmet, a handkerchief under the helmet covering his neck, stained and worn-out jeans, a worn-out hoodie, and one of those reflective vest dealies.

I asked myself: what other profession do these two sights bring to mind? The answer seemed obvious to me: a homeless person. Now, I don't mean to conflate the two because only one group provides a viable service. In case you couldn't figure it out on your own, I'm talking about homeless people. The provide an indispensable service to any community they're in.

Let's face it, if there we no homeless people, how would we be able to practice lying convincingly. Without the repeated practice of "Sorry, I don't have any change" and "Oh, I don't carry cash. I only use plastic," we would never be able to work up to more important lies. I'm pretty sure society would break down without these intrepid individuals taking one for the team. So next time someone gets up in arms about homelessness being a problem, you should say, "Homelessness is essential to our way of life! And I absolutely did not sleep with your wife." You'll be golden. And don't forget to thank the stinky guys by "accidentally" dropping some money by them some time. We can't let them think we'd give it to them willingly or they might be inspired to turn their lives around and get jobs and stuff. We certainly can't have that if we want to maintain our comfortable way of life.