NTKOG #6: The kind of girl who, upon seeing homeless people begging in the street, promptly gifts them with a warm, nourishing meal.
I am: a warm-hearted bleeding liberal, and try to keep my eyes open to suffering in my community. When I see homeless people, I try to weigh my current financial situation against my desire to give, and spare a dollar or two, at least.
I am not: perfect about this, by any means, though. At the end of the day, I know the dollars I dispense are just tiny hits of anesthesia to numb me to over-powering white/affluent guilt.
The Scene: Walking to my sister’s from my new apartment, I passed a kosher deli, in front of which stood a large, sad-eyed woman with an adorable toddler on her hip. “Can you spare a few dollars?” she asked me, her eyes liquid with self-pity. “I just need to get something into their stomachs.” She gestured with her head over to another child, a few years older, hunched on the deli’s stoop.
“Of course,” I tell her, reaching into my wallet for three dollars. As she tells me “God bless you,” I am transfixed by her crumbling brown teeth: some are missing, others turned sideways, and all looking as though they are at war with each other. This is the mouth, if not the face, of institutionalized poverty.
As I walk onward, the afterglow of white-guilt assuagement is short-lived. For only a few dollars, what can she get those poor children? They need a real meal, something warm and lasting. My options are few: a sushi place, a Kosher bakery, a Pita Pit. I stop in the latter, then walked back out. Children are picky, maybe even starving children, and after going several days without eating, who knows what hell exotic mediterranean fare might wage on their angry intestines.
A burger joint comes into view. Surely just the thing! I stop inside and order four kids’ burgers and two cartons of french fries. As I wait for the fresh patties to grill up, I am alternately plagued with worry that by the time I return, they will be gone (but how far can a mother and her two starving toddlers walk? and where else do they have to go?), and visited by happy fantasies of the mother clutching the greasy bag to her chest, thanking me with tears in her eyes. (“Don’t be stupid. You’re not a saint. You’re just doing this for a dumb blog.”)
Finally the order is ready and I rush back to the deli. I don’t spot the family at first, then notice the same beautiful, sad toddler on the hip of her equally mouth-decayed father. I hand him the bag, “These are for you.”
“Thank you so much! God bless you,” he says. “My wife is inside trying to order. Would you believe we are only three dollars short of what we ordered?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any more cash.”
“No, no, you have already helped us so much. God bless you.”
The Verdict: After handing off the meal, I stop on the corner of the block across the street from the deli to shuffle in my purse for my phone. I feel a warm glow of pleasure — even moreso because the thanks were fairly understated. I peek back over my shoulder to see if the children are already eating the burgers and see the husband, leading the kids to a car in the deli’s parking lot.
Peering through shrubbery, I watch him toss the bag of burgers into the backseat and strap the toddler into a carseat, then buckle his son into the front. After a moment, the mother comes out of the deli, holding a large bag of food. They pull out of the parking lot, and, giving up any attempt at subterfuge, I run after them.
They are driving a spotless white 2007 Nissan, with current DMV tags. CURRENT DMV TAGS! I follow the car a few blocks through the stately, tree-lined neighborhood, but they finally lose me.
I guess I should have stopped at that sushi place after all. Hope I didn’t offend the little tykes with such pedestrian fare as burgers.
So Am I That Kind of Girl? The kind of girl I am right now is friggin’ incredulous — too much so to even be properly incensed. I snuffled indignantly the whole walk home. But even though this was a bit eye-opening, it wasn’t enough to permanently tourniquet my bleeding liberal heart. Still, next time, instead of shelling out $$$ for burgers, I’m going to just keep a stash of PowerBars in my purse to get my feeding-the-hungry fix without running too big a risk.
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it took me forever to get used to the homeless in boston. there was this one man who would hang out in front of one of the school buildings where there was a vent that blew hot air. i always wanted to bring him a meal from the student union, but whenever i got the courage to do so, he was never there.
and then someone drew a cartoon about him in the student newspaper that depicted him having a radio, ipod, bmw, and other things… and i was incensed somebody would think he was “conning” college students (he was never begging for money, merely keeping warm), but it definitely altered the way i thought about him from then on. sadly, i never found out if he truly was homeless…
also, re: umbrellas — they are pretty useless in boston because of the wind (it’s hardly ever rainy and NOT windy). i’d suggest investing in one that comes with a replacement warranty (kind of like how l.l. bean does with their backpacks and such), because you will go through SO many. either that or invest in a rain jacket with a hood.
Good tip on the umbrella! I had to use one for the first time yesterday, and I got wetter from the recoil of having to snap it back from being inside out than I would have from just walking in the stupid rain. Some sort of weird wind tunnel effect on the city streets. I blame the cobblestone!
Ugh. I think I know where you were! And I have seen people panhandling and USING CELL PHONES.
Ah. Three sort-of-similar examples:
#1: I pulled out of MickyD’s after picking up the 2 Cheeseburger value meal, because I was hungry but wanted something very quick.
Barely a block away, I’d eaten CB#1 and decided that 1 of these things hitting my gut is enough. At a stoplight, a woman is going car to car, begging for some money for some food. I hand her a Micky D’s bag, with a fresh, hot, cheeseburger inside, briefly explaining what it was. She gave me a dirty look and started to walk away, then reached back and grabbed the bag. I think the crackhead wanted $1 towards her next fix, and didn’t care about eating.
#2: On my way into a divey bar, a young, somewhat disheveled guy asks for “$2.75 for the bus to Framingham”. I wasn’t feeling very generous at that time & place, so I declined his offer. 5 minutes later, in the bar, the same guy walks in and drops a pile of change on the bar, orders a Schlitz, and starts counting out his money. Looking up behind the bar, what do I see? Schlitz on special for, you guessed it, $2.75.
#3: Outside a convenience store, adjacent to a housing project an older lady hits me up for money for a sandwich for her child. I won’t give you money, I tell her, but I’ll buy a sandwich in the store. We go in and she picks out one of the sandwiches from the cooler. I head for the counter, and she asks, “what about a drink”. Starting to feel I’m being played, I grab a $0.99 bottle of water. She points to a $2.99 bottle of Iced Tea. I say, “absolutely not”. She gets mad. I pay the clerk and stop talking to the woman. Clerk rolls his eyes and says she’s a nut, and I shouldn’t encourage her…
The only person I’ve given to in a while is a guy who, when he asked for money, I asked him if it was for booze (we were near a liquor store). He said yes, and instead of $1, I gave him $5.
Cheers, dude.
I did so enjoy the second and third stories!!!