Friday, May 23, 2008

while outside another nation is sleeping in the streets...

a guy comes into my work today and tells me to call the police. i ask him why and he says that there's some homeless guy digging through the trash looking for something to eat. i say something like 'oh ok' and wonder why he even cares. there's no way i'm calling the cops over this. maybe if he was harassing people or whatever, but i'm not going to get in between him and his next meal. this guy almost certainly has it hard enough as it is, and i'm going to add to that? heck no.

there's all these signs downtown that say 'don't give where it can't help,' and i wonder what if there's a chance you can? i don't tend to give out money, but if someone says they need to get something to eat, i see if there's anything i've got on me that can remedy that even in a small way. when i was in dc, the people that asked you for money were so cracked-out that they would say they didn't want your food, they just wanted cash.

but this morning, when i was coming up from the train, a lady missing almost all her teeth asked me for change, which truthfully i didn't have, but i did offer her the banana that was going to be my lunch, and she did take it. i saw her standing on the corner eating it, so she must've needed it. a guy sitting on the steps of a church asked if i had any change so he could get something to eat. once again, i didn't, but i had a couple reese's cups in my bag and i passed them onto him. i was hungry but he was probably hungrier and i was wishing at that moment that i had a bag of chips or some pb&j sandwiches so it'd last him a little longer.

maybe i should just start carrying a stash of those with me.

2 comments:

Randal Graves said...

We always seem to buy too many apples, so instead of forcibly scarfing them down before they go funky, I should pass them out to these folks.

that girl said...

that happens to us too. sounds like a good plan.