Some years ago, Barbara and I were in Southern California, visiting for a few weeks with an old high school friend of Barbara's. Michael had been living for a couple of decades with a fellow named Herb (they were "partners"). They wined us and dined us and entertained us by showing us all over the area, including driving me to Pasadena and locating a couple of houses where I lived before my family moved back to Seattle when I was nine. Great nostalgia trip.

One day, they took us for a day-trip to Tijuana. Fascinating place in a gawdawful sort of way. We were sitting in an outdoor café having lunch, and there were about a half-dozen kids (maybe 5 to 8 years old) making the rounds of the tables, looking hungry. Whenever I set my burrito down on the plate for a moment to take a sip of my beer, this one kid would say, "Are you going to finish that?" He had a pair of cocker spaniel eyes, but I would have had more sympathy and compassion for him had he not been such a little porker. He could have lived for six months off his body fat. Most of the kids were similar. Begging at outdoor cafes was just something they did.

There were a whole bunch of Guatemalan children there, too, begging in the streets. They looked genuinely hungry and I was feeling pretty sympathetic toward them (they were refugees from a current nastiness in their own country), but there were so many of them! One of the local shopkeepers told us to simply ignore the kids. "Begging," he said, "is their form of play. Just working the tourists. It's all in the eyes." Well, maybe. . . .

Barbara and Michael went off to cruise a couple of shops and Herb and I went to check out a music store with guitars hanging in the window. Lots of guitars, some with ornate inlay, including mother-of-pearl. Sorta gaudy. Lots of flashy looking instruments for about $25.00, a few plainer looking ones for a bit more. Couldn't really try them out because most of them were sealed up in plastic bags! No problem. I wasn't in the market anyway, I was just looking.

As Herb and I were on our way to reconnoiter with Barbara and Michael (about a block and a half), we ware approached a couple of times by very attractive, well-groomed young women who asked us if we were "looking for something special?" We were too naïve to figure out what was going on, and simply responded "No, thank you." Michael told us that while Barbara was dickering with one of the shopkeepers, he stepped outside the shop for a smoke and he was approached by a very pretty young woman who asked him if he was "looking for something special." Not knowing what she was talking about, he responded in the negative. Back in the shop, the shopkeeper explained to him what was going on. If the girls ask someone directly if they're interested in their "services," they could be arrested for soliciting as a prostitute. By phrasing it the way they did, they could always claim that the tourist looked confused and they were offering to help them find a shop or a restaurant or something like that.

One thing that I noted was that these young women did not look anywhere near like the stereotyped "hooker," i.e., long in the tooth, too much make-up, kinda worn out looking, etc. They were generally in ther twenties, quite well-dressed, well-groomed, and very attractive.

Interesting world out there. . . .

Don Firth