thoughtfulI don't generally carry any cash with me. It's a combination of factors, the most pressing of which is probably "I am a slightly vacant-looking blonde woman with a real fondness for the sort of trail often featured in classic horror movies." I've never been mugged, and I'd really rather not start any time soon, so I make a point of having as little money on me as possible. It's fun! This does, however, put me at a bit of a disadvantage when people looking for a cup of coffee ask me if I have any change, since "No, for sociological reasons" doesn't make much sense without the context.
Some days, I head straight to the office in the morning. Other days, I stop by the 7-11 near the Montgomery Street BART Station, where I can obtain a Double-Big Gulp of Diet Dr Pepper to get me through the morning. Despite the fact that it's June and should be, I don't know, summer, it was misting lightly, resulting in instant chilly dampness. Peh.
As I walked toward the 7-11, a man sitting on the sidewalk asked, "If you have any change when you come out, could you maybe help me get some breakfast?" He was hugging his dog. It was a good dog, brown and tan and cold-looking, but good. I like dogs.
"I'll see what I can do," I said, and went inside.
About five minutes later, I came out with my soda, a large coffee, a bunch of sugar and creamer packets (I never got the hang of fixing other people's coffees), an egg-on-croissant sandwich, and the biggest cinnamon bun they had, on the theory that he could, I don't know, give whatever he wanted to the dog. As I emerged, a little girl was petting the dog, and he was reassuring her mother that he'd never ask a kid for money just to pet his dog. The kid and her mother left. I walked over.
"I brought you breakfast," I said, and started handing him food.
He was very pleased—who doesn't like food?—and asked my name. I told him. His name was Dave (the dog was Daisy). Smiles all around...and then, as I was turning to head for work, he waved to another homeless gentleman, this one older, thinner, and sitting back against a doorway to stay out of the wet, and asked what was probably the best pair of questions I'll hear all day:
"Hey, you hungry? You want to share my breakfast?"
Sometimes the human race is fundamentally decent, even when it's hungry, damp, and sitting on a San Francisco sidewalk.
It's gonna be a pretty good day.
June 25 2010, 20:08:46 UTC 7 years ago
This story made me happy. It also made me sad. It made me happy because I like to see my stubborn belief that humans are decent people most of the time when you give them the chance to be. It made me sad because I don't know if I would have done what you did. I might have once. I don't know if I could now.
Much of this is a result of having lived in one of the most dangerous cities in the country while I attended grad school. It was a very good school and they gave me a good scholarship, which I really needed, and I am glad I went there, as they have continued to try and do right by me in this awful economy.
But it meant I was surrounded, all day, every day, by absolutely CRUSHING poverty. I was in a city where the good part of town meant people might venture out into the streets during daylight but still hid behind barred doors after five PM. And we were conditioned to be very cautious. As in "Don't ever give money to panhandlers because you could end up getting jumped if people see you have money." So I learned not to carry money with me. I walked through the city with my earbuds in even though my ipod was off (so I could hear trouble; this actually spared me some grief once when I nearly ended up in the middle of a gang fight for being in the wrong place at the wrong time) because then nobody tried to talk to me. I kept my eyes where my feet were going and I didn't go out alone, or at night, unless I'd called the campus police for an escort.
It wasn't until after I left that I realized the only students I ever heard of getting mugged were the ones who went out looking for drugs (cars getting broken into was another story.)
I did try to help. I was a DV advocate. I helped raise money and supplies for the soup kitchens. I taught for a semester at a city high school. I sat on panels and advocated for the school getting more involved in the community where we were (the locals called us "The Fortress.") rather than trying to pretend it was in neighboring Philadelphia.
But I had a friend who did all I did, and still walked unafraid through the city, and bought people coffee, and talked to them, and got to know them, and was sometimes therefore able to help them. He never had a problem all three years he lived there. Granted, he'd worked in economic development before, so he was used to being in bad cities in developing countries. He'd lost a lot of his fear. But he hadn't hardened his heart, and somewhere down the line, I had.
June 28 2010, 02:18:40 UTC 7 years ago
Hugs.