My sweet, beautiful college aged cousin called me today. She's in town with her boyfriend and a bunch of UVA kids doing Katrina relief work. I called her back at 6pm-pitch black mind you- and she told me she was with 2 girls window shopping on Magazine. "Where?", I asked her. Oh, the 3000 block. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said to myself.
"Please be careful", I said.
So she said she wanted to stop by before they went to dinner. So I gave her directions to my house and worried the whole time that she wouldn't make it. My phone was ringing off the hook and I frantically cut each and every person off every time the other line clicked. and then I read Chris Rose's column, agreed totally and waited in fear for her to arrive in one piece.

When she got here she asked me if it was really so unsafe. I told her it had gotten pretty bad in the past few weeks. After she left I remembered when I brought my freshman roommate home from college. She was from Waco, Texas. We got here late on a Thursday, I think, and we were waiting for other friends' plane to arrive. We were bored so she suggested we got take a walk around the neighborhood. I laughed and said, "yeah, right. If you wanna get shot" Sad how some things never change.