Bob and Debbie Conroy - Enjoying the Journey Together!

I was picking up license plates for a new car in Adel, IA and noticed a sign on a building across the street. The sign was for a bar with the prosaic name Hideaway Lounge . It was a bar, i.e., a business where people make a profit off other people’s chemical dependency. But it was the other business that really caught my eye, a 24 hour crisis center. How ironic that a bar and a crisis center are co-located. It is an obvious symbiotic relationship but is it mutualism, commensalism or parasitism?  An additional irony is the address: 911.

Some of the things that make me stop and think “Really”: License plates with stickers in multiple places besides the lower left corner. People that refuse to get a computer or use the Internet. Parents with children with more alcohol than food in their cart. Graffiti. Broke people driving new cars and living in big houses. Sports fanatics that can recite sports score and stats but couldn’t name a single person in the Cabinet, their U. S. Congressman, state legislator or state senator. Rap music with profane and violent lyrics. Computer viruses. People that say, “Don’t judge” since good judgment is what keeps us safe. Why it is called Happy Hour? “Reality TV” since it is anything but real. National Public Radio. People that define themselves by a brand of beer or a sports team. Real estate developers that go broke to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in little old Des Moines. Rekha Basu and the Des Moines Register in general. Professional Sports...