Street II

This guy could probably use a beer, I thought. And maybe a couple dollars, both of which I have more of than I really need and it's damn cold outside. I had picked up a six pack from the local grocery store and some stuff for dinner. I needed to study for an exam and had found that a few beers really help me to relax and focus, oddly enough, but I didn't need 6 of them. Anything I left in the fridge was always consumed by my roommate by the next morning anyway. I asked the guy sitting outside with his cardboard sign if he would like a beer or two.

The kid was crying. Sure, he would like a beer, though he seemed pretty indifferent to my micro brews and my cash. I sat down on the street beside him and explained that I was picking up some beer to help me study. I pulled a couple of bottles out of the 6 pack while a cop rolled by watching closely as I contributed to the delinquency of a minor. The kid asked me what I was in school for. I told him I was taking a couple of graduate level psychology classes at PSU. He seemed genuinely interested in my life. A real nice guy. Obviously very distressed at the moment.

Later, over dinner at my house, he told me he was crying when I met him because a guy had just given him a candy cane and he was thinking about Christmas and his mother who had recently died, leaving him eventually homeless. He was feeling nostalgic. Really missing his mom. So fucking sad. A real nice kid. He helped me haul out my trash and recyclables and turned me on to Tupac. I guess Tupac was a Christian or something and he was a Christian and liked his music. We listened to rap, drank beer and he used my computer while I studied for the exam I would take the next day after work.

Working full time and taking two classes was stressing me out. I had developed an eye twitch. Having this kid around was great. He was seriously great company after he got over thanking me every five minutes for letting him crash at my place. He had some kind of run in with a wild animal the night before and was not looking forward to being on the street again. Some critter was scratching at his face. He never saw what it was. Creepy. Horrible, really.

The next morning he walked me to my bus stop with a new back pack I had given him, my bus pass, and a list of local services for youth. I left him my number, but didn't hear from him again and assume he got himself set up with a place to crash and get on his feet again. My co-workers insisted that I could have gotten knifed when I shared the story later that morning. They also thought it was a real act of compassion. It saddens me to think that something so simple- giving someone a place to crash during record cold temperatures is such a noble and courageous act. You would have done the same thing. That was my response. People are always doing kind things for other people in distress. When we normalize something like homelessness, we stop seeing the suffering, but in most situations, when we see that someone needs something, our natural impulse is to respond.

We have given ourselves pernission to make homelessness OK. We have not prioritized taking care of our communities at the most basic level and have somehow all decided that it's someone else's problem or that there is nothing we can do about it. This asumption is the reflection of our current cultural paradigm that dehumanizes people at all levels. Homelessness in America is an indication that we have really messed some things up and that we want to kill the messenger by ignoring the problem.

I aced my exam that evening, but more importantly, really questioned the type of education I was recieving and what was really informing all of our lives and life decisions. I feel indebted to that kid for the perspective that he gave me and hope that he's doing OK.