"Stick your arm for some real fun"

We all know about the homeless man I found sleeping in my car a few weeks ago. It needed a jumpstart and smelled of hobo for days in there but just I realized it could have been a lot worse.

I'm pretty street-smart. At least, I think I am. I try to emulate my dad in negotiating the mean streets, but he's slightly more respectable and intimidating than I am (the dimples work against me in that regard... hence the beard). But when I found a syringe Wednesday on the street, I didn't know what to do. There's a high school up the street from me. I didn't want one of the kids to fall on it or something. Also, Narges almost exclusively wears sandals and I for sure don't want her to kick it with her bare toes (ahhh, bear toes!) so I had to get rid of it somehow.

But I sure ain't picking it up.

I thought about kicking it in the gutter, but the nightly streetsweeping would, with my recent luck, kick it out to the middle of the street where it would wait patiently to embed itself in my tire. I seriously considered picking it up, but looking at it puts me in a surreal mindset - it's a very odd-looking and nefarious device.

This is the kind of thing they should teach in drug education. Sure warn kids about drugs, but when you take health in college, talk about what do to if you find a syringe, or a vile some crackhead dropped on his way to or from the cluster.

I settled on kicking it into a planter box, being sure that the needle side is securely in the dirt.

Every day I walk by and look. It's still there.