My girlfriend and I were listening to WMUL the other day, enjoying the music, when the news came on. So we sighed, and patiently waited for the music to come back on.

But then I noticed something odd about one of the stories they had. Apparently the tent cities for Hurricane Andrew relief had been taken down, and were being set up again to house five thousand people who had lost their homes. The news story called them "homeless".

And I thought about that for a second.

There's got to be more than five thousand homeless people living on the streets of Florida. There's millions of homeless people across the country. But a certain five thousand, who until recently had a house, two cars, a kid or two, and so on, get shelter while millions of people are still sleeping in the streets.

Something doesn't seem quite right about that.

Explain to me how this is possible in a country that has a majority of Christians, who are supposed to give everything to help the poor, and instead have tv preachers amassing millions of dollars, tax-free. Explain to me how anybody can oppose legislation to help people who are homeless or can't get a job. It's not like you can make yourself look presentable for an interview when you're living on the street.

Yes, many of these people have problems such as alcoholism and schizophrenia. But this doesn't mean that we should turn our backs on them; rather, we should try even harder to help them and have opportunities there for them.

Homeless people are human beings too.

Let me take you on a little trip of the imagination.

You wake up, cramped and cold. You try to feel your toes, but can't. It doesn't bother you. It happens every day. Outside of the alley you hear people walking to work. The rumbling of your constricted stomach bothers you, so you root around in a dumpster. You have no money, and haven't eaten in close to a week, so the trash looks at least somewhat edible as you try to keep from gagging as you choke it down.

Once you thought you'd make something of yourself. You graduated from high school and got part of the way through college until your parents got in the wreck. You still cry when you think of Mom dying on the freeway. Dad lingered in the hospital. They hadn't had enough money to keep their insurance up, so you tried to help, working two jobs flipping burgers. But it wasn't enough. You kept falling asleep from having to work two jobs, so you got fired. You couldn't pay the rent and got kicked out of your apartment. You've had to live hand to mouth ever since, trying to sleep where you could. You've heard horror stories about people like you sleeping in dumpsters and being crushed in garbage trucks, or about others burned alive by kids.

You look down at the clothes you've been wearing for the last month. You've tried to get jobs, but who'd hire a stinking bum dressed in rags? It'd be bad for business. It's only occasionally that you even get someone to take you up on your "will work for food" sign. At least you're out here by yourself and don't have to try to scrounge for a family.

And so you're stuck, because the people you see walking by every day just look away, and put you out of their minds while buying that pack of cigarettes or extra Coke for the kids, that little bit of money that would put some food into your stomach.

Think about it.