I'm not a snob. Or maybe I am, but didn't use to be. But I don't mind tellin' ya I am not looking forward to going back to that DSHS building to drop off my paperwork for foster/adopt licensing. It's a three story building, and the welfare office is on the bottom floor. Which means I have to get through that before I get to where I need to go. Out front is the myriad of young teen girls and tough looking old welfare broads smoking, with what appears to be their boyfriends/husbands/pimps?
Don't think I'm too judgemental now. Those are my people. Or rather they used to be. I grew up a welfare kid and spent many an hour playing in the welfare office while my own mom or aunt stood in line or went in for some meeting or other. I grew up eating government cheese and those weird little "chocolate" "food" sticks.
But I'll tell you what, it's been alot of years. I'm not that little welfare kid anymore, whose whole world consists of other welfare kids, drug addcits and alchoholics.
I don't like it there. But it occurred to me that you can get caloused to that kind of thing and think it's normal and okay. When in fact, it's not. I thought that was normal growing up. My own children would be horrified at the sight of that building and the people who hang out there. Not that they shouldn't be exposed. Really, I think I'll take them next time. Mean, huh? If nothing else they will feel gratitiude for their father and I for giving them a safe, secure, and clean, healthy life. Mostly so they can appreciate where our babies are coming from and what they may have to return to. To see they are called to love and pray. For them, as well as for the ruffians out front of that building who may or may not be the parents of one of our babies.
Still, though, I don't mind tellin' ya, it's scary going back there.
I have a tough act though- I can still pull it off I think. I learned it from my childhood. Pretend you are not scared, and maybe, just maybe, they should be scared of you. That's the act. ")
Now I realize there are perfectly nice people there too, just down on their luck so-to-speak. But the majority rules out there in the smoking area, and the majority is carrying around a mentality of give-it-to-me-for-free, I-don't-want-to-work. Have you ever seen so many able-bodied men in a hand out line before? What's the deal with grown men, in their early twenties too lazy to work and the government paying them to produce children out of wedlock in their spare time from drug dealing?
Yikes. I better get off this soap box. It makes me mad.
