Truth in Advertising

There's a panhandler out on Downtown Crossing today.

His sign says,

Why lie?
I need a beer.

The last I saw, some tourists were taking their picture with him. Maybe he's on to something...

Boston's homeless...

...and everywhere else, for that matter...

Yesterday was the reason I blog...to learn, to share, to grow...we're all in this together...I can see that so clearly...

Yeah, Christine, I have a heart, you're right. I've known that for a long time, and sometimes I wish I didn't because, using one of your literary choices, I'll borrow from the Wizard of Oz's Tinman and say that sometimes, a lot of times, I can feel it breaking. (And, to extend the metaphor just a bit more, just like most people, I also have brains and courage, too. Not always in the most exquisite amounts, though.)

And no, to another gentle reader, I'm not naive. I'm 52 years old and have seen more of this damn world than I sometimes care to admit.

And to Rachel, yes, I know that most of the time the homeless are just going to get a fix or a drink. God love people like you who actually use your time and energy to help these people, instead of cranks like me who just wallow on a blog. I've never thought of handing coins to the homeless as worthless, though. I like to look them in the eye, wish them well. The exchange lasts no more than ten seconds, but for those ten seconds (I hope) they get a little respect...a tiny feeling of worth, a little something, a foothold that might get them through the day. I say that because it seems that that is all I know...have...yeah, I also do it for selfish reasons...it makes me feel good, maybe even superior. I'll burn for that, maybe.

This is really all I have to say on the subject. I do post all comments (so far.) Everybody needs a voice...an outlet.

Cries in the city redux

A couple of comments came through about my post about the panhandler in South Station...all good...when you've been around enough, even if it's just Boston, forget all the foreign cities I've been to, you get pretty jaded. And no, you certainly can't empty your pockets and save the world.

But something broke through the crust in me yesterday...maybe it was his pitiful cries for whatever reason...usually these guys aren't this...what's the word?--vocal? wretched? Maybe it was because he needed a fix really bad and didn't want to resort to anything really desperate, illegal, or harmful.

No, I didn't give him anything either, although I've reached in my pocket on more than one occasion for the homeless in Boston. And like one commenter said, I've also bought burgers and fries at McDonald's and dropped the sack in a homeless person's lap and kept walking. That was probably better than money because, sure, you can't barter a hamburger for drugs or booze. Or maybe you can, I don't know.

And maybe that's a good point. Most of us really don't know what life is like that far on the edge. Some of us do. I know a guy who lived in a car when he was little. (And he has very little sympathy for panhandlers; we're all products of our own particular experiences.) I've known my share of addicts, drunks, and down-and-outs in my life. Some of them aren't alive today because of their demons. Maybe you can keep a person alive for a day with a handout, or maybe they'll take it and kill themselves with it that night.

Maybe these scams are desperate attempts just to get something, because just standing there with your cup out just doesn't bring in enough.

I keep saying it: I don't know.

Maybe they should get a job. Learn how to play guitar and busk in the subway stations. That would certainly meet society's minimum standards for a work ethic.

Cries in the city

Last night, a man in South Station stood at the base of the down escalator pleading for money. Please, he beseeched, I'm just short three dollars. Please, he wailed to each person the escalator fed past him.

What were their thoughts? What were their feelings? Fear? Embarrassment? Disgust?

Shame on us. Shame on us for letting this happen. Shame on all of us for having grown so hard that we can so easily turn away. Shame on us for being so cold that my response is to dissect the situation, as coolly and clinically as a technician dismembers a frog. Each and every one of us probably had the three dollars in our pockets, but none of us reached in for even a quarter.

The money changers

Last week we had at work something they called a re-stack. They shuffled around, oh 900-odd people, moving us all onto different floors and different spaces (read cubes.)

I moved into my new space on Monday, pulled open the desk drawer and (surprise, surprise!) found a load of pennies, which I'm sure a lot of people also did.

Over the course of my career I've moved into a lot of new spaces, and more times than naught I've inherited the previous owner's collection of pennies. To which I added until I moved on.

But I'm not going to do that this time. Today I brought a little ziplock bag and I've already put the pennies in it and I'm going to give them to the first street person I see when I leave today.

Weird, I know, and there's a really good chance I'll have some homeless person thinking, "Well, there goes someone crazier than me." But if every one of the 900-odd people in this agency did that, some people would either be eating or drinking just a little better tonight.

$1 or a smile

A man held up a sign this morning asking for either a smile or a dollar. I grinned, and I'm not sure at what--either the sheer delight of someone, anyone, trying desperately to spread some cheer to the people in this city who can be so fashionably cold and aloof, or his bravado for asking for a buck. Forget spare change, this guy is looking for hard cash. Good for him, I thought. He's thinking big. If you don't ask you won't get it. You could hear in his volume and see in his grandiose motions that he was pushing up against something really big, something big he was fighting. Something told me Fellowship. Something about his overly optimistic view of his fellow creatures, something that I've been struggling with lately.

"You got the idea," he yelled at me. I walked over to him, knowing I did have a couple of dollar bills in my pocket. I knew that because I have to collect them for the parking lot at the train station. I value those pieces of scrap paper. But I could give up one for this guy.

"Here ya go," I said, "what are you up to?"

"Well," he replied, "hopefully by the end of the day I'll have a job."

"What do you do?" this copywriter for Buick asked. Hell, maybe we have something in common, I thought, but please don't tell me you're an out-of-work writer.

"I'm a dishwasher," he answered. He said he was trying to get train fare to Dedham.

Dollars to donuts he won't get the job even if he does get to Dedham. But...and this is a really big but...he might have helped me out more today that I helped him, so I sincerely wish him all the luck in the world.

Giving...and those that take

Like every major city in the world, Boston has its share of homeless people and panhandlers. And my heart goes out to them. Sometimes I think, there but for the grace of God. Most of us don’t realize the thin line that exists between sanity and the insane, between the good-hearted and the criminal. I’ve seen that line. I’ve been pretty close to that line. I guess I’ve even crossed that line. So a little compassion comes easy for me.

I’ll reach into my pocket, and whatever I have in my pocket I’ll drop in their cup. Nickels, dimes, quarters, guitar picks. Whatever. This seems to embarrass a particular friend of mine. Or it insults him, I really don’t know. While I’m fishing around in my pocket, he’ll keep walking. And when I catch up he doesn’t comment. He just ignores the whole thing.

Another guy I used to know would lecture me that it was wrong to do it. “They’ll just use it to buy booze,” he’d admonish me. It turns out that at a later date in our lives he judged me just as harshly. Judge, jury, and hangman. I guess I had that one coming. Maybe they’ll buy booze; maybe they won’t. I don’t know about that. I know that what I’m giving them is more than a couple of quarters. For a split second or so I’m giving them some respect, some validation that they actually exist on this planet and that another human being noticed them, even if it is for the briefest of time. I look them in the eye and wish them luck. I don’t know if that’s enough; if it will or can get someone through a day, but it’s all I can do.

I guess we all do the best we can. As much as I’d like to help everyone I come across, I don’t have enough money in my bank account for myself, much less the poor I come in contact with every day. As much as we’d all like to help, we just don’t have it, and if for some twisted reason we decided to try to help someone full bore, we’d find that our resources would be drained pretty quickly and we’d be left with as little as the person we originally tried to help.

There are others who don’t drain us of money, but of our emotional reserves. There are people who are just as empty of emotion and feeling as the homeless are of currency. I’ve had the unlucky fate of having had one or two people like this in my life. They’re hard to spot. They present just like everyone else. But they need so much, so much more than we can possibly give, and when we do give attention or energy or even our love and lives to them we don’t see the balance sheet going in the red like we would in our checkbook. They can take everything we’ve got, and when there’s nothing left to give they discard us as they would an empty bottle by the roadside. And if we ask for something in return, they just give us a blank look, because they don’t know how to give, only how to take. It’s survival for them, pure and simple. A selfishness bred from never having had love or tenderness in their lives, most likely when they were children. They are empty inside, devoid of any sense of self, of themselves, of who they are, so they take our sense of ourselves. It's like emotional identity theft. This borderline behavior is as insidious as a vampire’s, and leaves us for dead, as empty as they are.