It's funny how the line seems to move sometimes. How what was good and OK seemed to be starkly apparent, and then little by little it changes.

As we grow older, our convictions seem to collide. Have you ever noticed that? There was a time when I really thought of prostitutes as beneath me, beneath everyone. Bottom of the bottom. I judged them unmercifully.

I'd heard the reasoning that these women needed to feed their children. Fair enough I thought, get jobs, get welfare, quit sellin' your ass. One day something changed all that. My best best friend was arrested for prostitution. Isn't that just crazy? Here's something more. She lived with me, she went to work with me, she ate with me.

The only time my friend wasn't with me, was when I was asleep, and she was 'walking the track'. I didn't know what walking the track was at the time. But I later took a shot at writing her biography. Or at least helping her blog it ;).

She eventually lost interest, and her blog lost traffic, and the posts pretty much disappeared, lost in a database somewhere, but inaccessible from the wordpress blog software that lives there.

Crazy huh.

So my best friend was a hooker, and i thought she was as disgusting as I'd always thought all hookers were. But wait what?!. I loved her only weeks before, now here she is, alone in jail, extradited to another state for guess what, an old prostitution charge.. and .. I just walk away?

Now you know I can't do that.

It's sort of like the first time I ever shoplifted... well as an adult..

It was tax refund season, I had thousands to spend, and really no direction in my life. I filled a cart to the brim. Just random things really. All those things a teenage mom might want to buy for her children, but really never be able to.

Clothes, and sun tan lotion, and mega packs of diapers, a stroller. The cart overflowed with random things. My little girl needed to use a restroom, so we walked to the back of the store all those years ago, to the only bathroom in the K Mart.. It was filthy, and she refused to use it.

I was irritated after walking all the way back there, now I would need to walk all the way to the front of the store, and why do stores always have such nasty restrooms? Wanting them to know that their restroom was disgustingly filthy, i made a quick stop at the customer service desk.

I'd been going to this mall for years and years, I knew where every store was, I could navigate the employee halls in fact. But I asked the her anyway "Ma'am, is there another restroom? Yours is so filthy that even my little girl refuses to use it."

She of course directed me out of the store, and into the main mall, down the hall just a touch to the mall restrooms. I took my daughter to the family restroom, we both peed, and then...

It dawned on me. I brought the cart. It felt like my heart had stopped. Surely there are security guards outside of the door. Surely I'm moments from going to jail. There's no way that anyone is going to believe that I didn't mean to steal the things in the cart. That I was just irritated by the dirty bathroom.

I gave my daughter a great big hug. Opened one of the treats in the cart, and gave it to her. and then.. I opened the door.

Outside of that restroom door was.. the mall. Just the way you would expect to see it. Full of people, busy, bright, and welcoming.

I had a choice to make here, and I of course made the easy choice. I walked straight out the mall doors to my car, and loaded all of the things from the cart to the car with no bags.

This particular mall is on an island, for my own piece of mind, i wish that little thought had crossed my mind a touch sooner.