Tonight I watched a story on Dateline about this 17 year old girl who had a baby in the basement of her parents suburban home. Maybe she was scared of what her parents would think, maybe she didn't want to cramp her style; she wrapped her newborn child in some towels and shoved it into a  garbage bag. She ended up getting convicted of manslaughter and got 8 years. During the interview with the parents they kept saying that if only she had come to them, they would have done something to help-anything. All she had to do was ask. They were, after all, her parents.

 I am currently broke and after the show I scrounged around the apartment for $2.99 to buy a pack a cigarettes. After two hours, I managed to come up with enough money but it was mostly in pennies so I decided to go to the Pathmark on Monument to change the money into dollars and quarters. I don't have any license plates on the car (no insurance. registration, etc.) so I know the risks involved with driving, but I need that smoke. So it set out down Lincoln Drive paying more attention to the rear-view mirror than to oncoming traffic-watching for the police. Along the way, I narrowly missed killing  a young mother and her son crossing the windy road; something I would have easily seen had I not been concentrating elsewhere.

If I had run into the mother and son, and perhaps killed them, and somehow eventually gotten convicted of vehicular manslaughter, I could see my parents on Dateline: If only he had asked for the money to get his license plates and insurance... and they would be right . They probably would have given me the money. In retrospect. But I honestly can't see them giving it to me now. Which is why I won't ask.
    
That little girl knew better. So do I.