Wondering About Those Mail Order Brides

Random Homeless Person (HP) with long legs and a big stride comes up from behind me while walking down the sidewalk and starts talking to me (M), forcing me to pick up the pace:

HP: Do you know what I'm saying? You have to take the negative things in life, the negative situations and make something positive out of it. Do you know where there is a laundromat?

M: There is 'City Suds' at 19th & L Streets. Are you going there now?

HP: 'City Suds' - yes, I have heard of it. I have these shrink-to-fit jeans that I got at Loaves and Fishes and that I have to wash. I have a house in Davis, and another one in Citrus Heights, where I could wash them, but they are too far away. Is there enough business in downtown for a laundromat?

M.: Ten years ago, I would have said no, but a lot of young people who work at the Capitol have moved downtown.

HP: It makes no sense to me. It's just throwing equity away, these places with no yards. Why would they do that?

M.: It's OK if they're just going to be doing it for a few years.

HP: It seems strange that the Republicans and the Democrats, who should be so close together as to be almost identical, are somehow so different.

M.: Well, Democrats are mostly lawyers and Republicans are mostly business people. They see the world differently.

HP: There is so much going on in the world that has nothing to do with politics. People have a Catholic, or Catholic-like, or a Christian-like viewpoint. For example, do you want to know what happens with the people who immigrate here - the Russian mail-order brides? They make their own little households, their own little worlds, just like the people; just like the women I knew when we were growing up. Or, just like I knew when I was growing up. Are you Jewish?

M.: No, but everyone says I look it.

HP: My girlfriend was Jewish. Her mother was SO Jewish. But if you aren't prepared to have an income they really don't want you to hang around their daughter. We dated 13 years, but never married.

M: (arriving at my destination) Well, I must leave. 'City Suds' - turn right at the light, then another two or three blocks....