Do you really want to hurt me?

Yesterday I saw a man beat a dog with a large wooden stick, while holding another dog up by the collar with his other hand.

Tonight I saw a man raise his fist to punch (someone I assumed to be) his wife in the face.

No respect for animals, no respect for people. What’s next?

Oh, life.

This morning I got off the Broad Street line at 15th Street to catch the EL; there stood a cop who looked like he should get over himself and seemed a bit bored. He stopped a rather short, hoodie-wearing guy, just before he called over a short, hoodie-wearing girl. I paused my music straight away, since my hand and mp3 player were both conveniently in the same pocket, and noticed as I walked past the threesome that the two hooded individuals were Mexican.

Says the cop to the guy, very seriously and with his hands on his hips, “How old are you?” The guy replies, “[inaudible]” The cop turns to the girl: “And you?” With my mad lip-and-eyebrow-reading skillz* I learned that the girl was “Nineteen?”

I could barely hear the rest of the conversation (15th Street Station is loud, what with the Broad Street line, the Market-Frankford line, and the godforsaken trolleys from the devil’s asshole), but, from looking at them and using the most of what I could hear, I can tell you that the rest of the conversation went something like this:

Cop: You go to school?
Guy: Yes?
Cop: High school?
Girl: No?
Cop: All right, you can go.

Guy and girl then went separate ways.

I turned my music back on and laughed. During the entire exchange I kept thinking, “Please don’t ask them if they’re legal…”

From there to 34th Street, I couldn’t get that shit-eating grin from my face.

Isn’t horrible that I have a bad image of cops in this city? In retrospect, I should have thanked him for trying to keep kids out of the streets.

*Special thanks to my ASL classes and instructors.