Common Sense

I had to run out to the store a moment ago. I had planned to make it a quick, uneventful little trip to pick up a few items and get back home to work on my book, but it didn't end up being as uneventful as I'd planned.

On the way, I happened to run into a bit of construction work on the main street I use often. It caused a back up on the street, no vehicle moved for ten, fifteen minutes. As fate would have it I was stopped, unmoving right in front of a trailer park. Lots of foot traffic was visible from where I sat, stranded in a long line of vehicles. I travel this street all the time; I knew this trailer park community well. However, I never really thought about it before. I'd even noticed a lot of the activities many times as I had passed by in the past. But, I--like most of my fellow citizens of our town--never imagined I was aiding and abetting in a crime.

One source of credible information on the bulk of residents in this community had been one of my lawn crew a few years ago. He'd [I'll call him Juan] mentioned that his sister, her husband, his brother and his wife, and their combined nine children lived in that trailer park. He mentioned he was going to try getting his brother-in-law and his brother on with the lawn care company which serviced the lawns of over half the homes on my street, including my own. It seems the two couples and their children had just moved into the trailer park the day before. They had not moved from around the corner or not even across the state or country. These two families had crossed the border between our country and Mexico earlier in the morning, three days before they had moved into the trailer park.

I was not impressed by what Juan had told me as much as I was that he had felt he could tell me. You see, if we really thought about it, we'd realize that Juan's sister, her husband, and her in-laws had broken the laws which govern our country. They came into our country under the cover of night; they'd come without applying for permissions to enter, nor to stay. Yet, here they stay even until today, as far as I know.

Common Sense. We need to use our common sense in situations like these. As you will tell by a lot of things I write, I care about people because they are people. I do not care what their race, their creed, their color, their nationality, their religious beliefs (or disbeliefs), their political affiliations, their economic status or educational background. I just like people. My weakness is always being able to see the good in everyone I meet, until they prove to me otherwise. I have nothing against Juan, his sister Maria Grace, her husband Jorge. (BTW, these are alias, not their real names...gotta protect the innocent--and avoid lawsuits (more on that in a later post).) But, let's be realistic here. Are these lovely people though they may be, not breaking our laws? Do we not break them also when we know better?

Well, when I phoned the local lawmakers who would (should) handle this situation or at the very least check into the issue, they told me they did not have the authority to even look into it. Unless one or more of these nice folks committed a crime, locally, they were powerless to do anything about them. I was not to bother them in any way, unless I wanted to risk being prosecuted for (now hold on... are you ready for this one?) violating their rights. I was floored... but smart enough to know how to survive. I daresay, that's probably why we all turn that blind eye while our country begins to sink--kind of like the Titanic, while the band played on.

People, we'd better start using our common sense or Rome won't be the only place that burned while the chief authority fiddled around. In the words of one well-known filmmaker in a few films: Wake up!