Thursday, May 06, 2004 Where are you registered?
When I walk home from the train station, cars beep their horns sometimes, because the drivers have noticed that I might be a girl, and it's their coy way of letting me know that they know I'm probably female. If I go home the way by way of the overpass for the Lowell connector, this happens more frequently. It's a little annoying, and that way's longer, too.
If I go the way past the boarded-up factory, the empty lot full of garbage, and the giant red vinyl chair that someone has placed on top of a shining silver 18-wheeler truck trailer, the walk is more tranquil until I get to the intersection where the cobblestones begin. Then the drivers are beeping because I cross in between, not on the green, and I can live with that.
On that leg of the trip, I'm usually looking at the side of the street with the big chair, and later the gym that advertises a "Tuscan Spa." Sometimes I fantasize that I call Tuscany, and they sue. I figure I'd get a small finders fee, so I could hold off a few years on pre-emptively willing my body to science or whatever it is I'm going to do the next time I'm short on cash.
For a long time, I didn't notice the one scuzzy old red brick building in the row of other scuzzy old red brick buildings, even though it has the little grace note of the heavy wire grating that blinds all the windows.
Then a few weeks ago on the news they did this bit on "Violent and Dangerous Sex Offenders: Would You Prefer to Have Them in Your Neighborhood or Not?" where they mentioned that the next night, towns would have to take down their online photo galleries of registered sex offenders. Of course we went to the Lowell website.
Sticky ethical issues, yadda/yadda, but I reiterate: of course we went to the website. Are you saying you wouldn't?
All the guys on there looked exactly like sex offenders you see on fictional TV programs: either darting-eyed or beligerent, mentally disabled or creepy. Not a decent haircut in the bunch. No fashion sense. No brow grooming.
Next to their glamour shots, the site gave their addresses: again, not sure if this is reasonable. But it turned out that almost all of them live together in the scuzzy building on the way home.
Why HBO doesn't have an edgy dark sitcom set in a halfway house is anybody's guess, by the way. Comedy platinum!
I feel like I should avoid all those registered sex offenders on the way home, particularly because everybody in this town kind of looks like that. On the other hand, it's a shorter walk, but I need the excercise. So let's say I'm not being lazy to go that way: I'm just a good progressive who refuses to read "the man's" labels. posted by Frenz | 5/06/2004 11:34:00 PM
0 comments
|
