Typical

"Now isn't that typical"

-The Church Lady-

There are always stories in the local paper that make me rant and rave philosophical. At first glance these two stories seem to have little in common, but they do because of the different reactions people have to them -- which illustrates my point.

The first story is about an undocumented Guatemalan man who worked for a local gardening service. The truck he was riding in was hit head on by a drunk driver and Luis Jimenez suffered severe and irreversible brain trauma. Having no money, no local family and no insurance the local hospital took him in and over a period of a few years, his bills climbed into the millions. After three years, the hospital was granted a court order allowing them to charter a Medivac jet to send him home to his family, but the bill of course stayed here and will eventually be covered by increased insurance costs to all of us. End of story? No, his family has charged the hospital with kidnapping and is suing for damages.

The second story about a local homeless man caught swiping M&M's, T shirts and other items from a convenience store. He has a history of drug and public intoxication arrests, but he claims that he's entitled to all the M&Ms he can steal -- because he served in Iraq.

So what do these stories have to do with each other? Nothing really, but my reason for comparing them is that while people who write to newspapers use the first to howl and scream about illegal aliens and how this is typical of all of them, nobody uses the second to tell us that all Iraq veterans should be deported.

What makes something "typical" of a group? Usually our prejudices, our hidden fears and our dishonesty. Aren't we typical!