Bringing them to tears

At work I maintain a wall of shame featuring fake wanted posters for incompetent vendors we work with. The crimes include silly stufflike "Being almost totally unreachable" and "Holier-than-thou attitude". Anyway, the wall of shame has become infamous to one vendor. All that says is that they fuck up too much. But anyway, one of the people we work with has lived in fear of the wall since its inception. A couple weeks ago, her spot was assured when a dialing-plan project went to hell. Today she showed up to take her medicine and prostrate herself to my boss. When my counterpart and I joked that we were calling graphics up to take her picture, she literally teared up. Few things tug at my heart strings like weepy lady types, but this is more an indictment of instability, methinks. Anyway, this leads me to 2 topics; heartstrings and lambda betas.
On the heartstrings tip, there's this panhandler downtown that brings a dog along with him. Probably the most well behaved dog I've ever seen, as 15% of all passersby stop to pet it. This guy has the tramp thing down. He plays the harmonica and all. All he needs is the kerchief of belongings tied to a stick. Anyway, he's the only one my numbness filter consistently drops for, and I know it's because of that dog. The bigger question is what that makes me. If I can walk past humans on crutches and women with their children panhandling, only to hesitate at this guy with a dog that he (seriously) puts in one of those child trailers on the back of a bike he rides when his "shift" is done, what type of person does that make me? I give to charity a ton, and while I'm empathetic to the plight of the homeless, I seldom give out change.
Now then, What is a Lambda Beta you might ask? Lambda Beta is an honorary sorority we developed in my time at Illinois State (Go, Mascots!). Lambda Beta stands for Loony Broad, and in my estimation 60% of ISU's female population were on some sort of edge, so we had plenty of fodder. It was a warning system that we made to make sure each other'd stay away from the crazies. It got pretty elaborate, though, in that we had a charter for Lambda Betas, and the women would be initiated in pledge classes. We also kept the names on a scroll like a real sorority. Childish? Yes. Offensive? Come on. We were in college. Get a sense of humor. Necessary? you bet. I was stalked no fewer than three times in college. And not just visited by someone who couldn't get the idea that I wasn't interested. I mean followed to class, prank called and more. Mose of it was born of my nature and my unwillingness to tell someone to fuck off. Incidentally, 75% of men at ISU weren't stalked, because the posessed that sense. One girl pranked me forever. And even without caller ID, I knew it was her because her cordless made a beep when she hung up. So a few times a night, I'd pick up a phone to silence, say, "Holly?", and hear . Those were the days. When you'd be on a walk with a girl, and she'd overshare that both her mother and brother were in a mental institution, and you'd STILL make out with her. I dunno. Something about that vulnerability just tugged at my heartstrings.