Fake Baby Fiasco: A Rant in the Key of Homeless

I might lose some friends with this post. But it's worth the risk. I am tired of being conned by fake homeless people. A few days ago I was walking around the Yonge/Bloor area and I saw the woman who has filled me with rage on more than a few occasions. She had her familiar bundle at her front and her usual cardboard sign held in her greed-mongering fingers. She is the fake-baby-carrying-fake-homeless woman, and she needs to be stopped!

Some of you may recall the story of "the blanket lady" who has terrorized our Torontonian streets with her phony babbling and shaking and begging. This woman travels into the city, throws on a tattered blanket, and works the people for hard-earned dollar bills, y'all (I am aware that dollar bills are no longer in circulation). She makes me so mad I could spit. If she weren't married to a stronger man I would fistfight her without question.

But now my beef is with the Yonge/Bloor woman and her freaking fake baby. I approached her and offered her five bucks to simply look at the kid--you know, just to make sure the bundle wasn't a heavily cloaked Cabbage Patch doll (which it most certainly was). Well...she took off like a jet. And when I started snapping pictures she increased her speed. She knew that I was on to her! She knew that she was a fraud. And she feared exposure.

This woman is siphoning money from people who could really use it: people with urine in their pants and scattered thoughts in their brains. People who are legitimately down on their luck. People who deserve my coin. People who lack the deceit, or organizational skills, to develop bankable charades.

Some skeptics will give this woman the benefit of the doubt and lambaste me for not completely proving the baby is made out of a soft cloth/vinyl combination. That's fine. Let's just pretend that the kid is real. That opens a larger can of worms, see? Something is wrong with that damned picture! I can't even get a date on a Saturday night and this woman is spitting out kids? Ridiculous. Why encourage breeding on this level? Have we forgotten about Darwinism? Call me crazy, but I want more doctors, professors, and philosophers in the coming years. I don't want the next evolutionary step in our development to be the ability to eat a day-old Big Mac out of the garbage and enjoy it. I don't want tongues without taste buds to be the big physical leap in our progression as a species. Call me crazy. Do it.

Goddamn, I feel bad for these people. I truly do. But when I am walking out of Tim Hortons (the same one with the giant "Now Hiring For All Shifts" sign) don't ask me for change, okay? Move down a few blocks. Or, better yet, go to the Salvation Army with your wrinkled hat o' change. Buy a blazer and a pair of shoes for three bucks, and apply for a job. It's Tim Hortons for Christ's sake! They hire anybody. Half the people working there can't even speak properly. They screw up "double double" thirty percent of the time! You, dear homeless person, already know how to ask for change in English! You are halfway to becoming employee of the month! Gee whiz.

I know what all you people are going to tell me. You're going to tell me that these are injured people. You are going to tell me they can't help their situation. That's fine. But when a racehorse twists its ankle they bring the sucker out to pasture a blow a five-inch spike threw its head. They do it because the horse is a drain...financially and emotionally.

Perhaps it's time for some major action on our part. We should get serious about this homeless problem--really get in there and donate mass amounts of cash to clean the city. Or we should neglect these pour individuals altogether. They will either take action and change things for themselves or perish from the land. Giving them thirty-eight cents is only prolonging their tortured existence. We are nickel and diming these bastards to (slow) death.