Today I met a friend for lunch in Philadelphia’s Hard Rock Cafe. (Food was great, the loud booming music was not.) She’s an HR manager who still lives in the same Hellmouth apartment complex I did while she and her husband try to find an affordable house.

We had a lot of catching up to do (weddings, births, graduations), but first we talked politics. “”My eleven- and sixteen-year-old ask better questions than they do at these debates,” she said. “My youngest was watching the one last week, turned to me and said, ‘Mommy, they’re not really answering the questions.’ Imagine, they’re smarter than the people running the thing!”

As an African-American female professional, she knows all about having to prove herself and is skeptical that Obama will be much help to the middle class. (She’s also a staunch Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in the primary.)

“I don’t hear him addressing my issues,” she said. “Just a lot of meaningless talk, no one wants to talk about the people getting squeezed in the middle. Sounds more like a marketing campaign to me.”

We moved onto lighter subjects, like the 13-year-old girlfriend of her 11-year-old son who tried to give him $125 sneakers for his birthday. “He said, ‘Mom, is it all right for me to accept these?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not, that’s totally inappropriate.’ What is this little girl’s mother thinking, letting her buy presents like that for a boy at her age?”

“She’s thinking her daughter will love her if she lets her do this,” I said.

“Yeah, well, there’s some self-esteem issues there. My son’s on the phone with her all the time, a regular Dr. Phil: ‘It doesn’t matter if your sister tells you you’re fat and ugly - all that matters is how you see yourself.’ Then he started playing football and I thought, ‘Great, two hours a day when he’s away from her!’ I get to the practice field, I’m sitting there with my chair, my book and my bottled water and all of a sudden I hear someone calling my son’s name. It was her.

“I was really irritated. I said, ‘He is out there to concentrate on football and he doesn’t need you around while he’s trying to play.’ She started sobbing.

“Dear God.”