Another Day At The Grind...

This past weekend I was having breakfast with a friend of mine and I happened to look out the window to see two men passing by the cafe.  They looked pretty much like any of the other people passing by, and they seemed to be having a pleasant conversation.  I didn't really notice them other than to see that they both needed a shave.  So did I at that point - nine days without a razor - and it was no big deal, beard brothers one and all.

Fast forward about thirty minutes.  Our breakfast finished and paid for, my friend and I walked out of the cafe and on our way.  A few blocks later we came upon those same two men again.  This time they were propped up against lamp posts at a busy intersection, now wearing dirty, ripped t-shirts, with cardboard signs on their stomachs that said 'homeless, please help.'  Evidently their leisurely stroll and polite conversation had been a prelude to fraudulent panhandling.

You ever see those Roadrunner cartoons where the sheep dog and the coyote are just regular Joes working a shift?  They walk in with their lunch boxes, punch a clock, and then get to the business of cartoon anvils?  That was these guys.  Except they were going to their work of... not working.

I was incensed at first - how dare they?  Then I realized I hadn't finished that thought.  How dare they what?  Walk past a restaurant where I was eating?  Plant themselves at a busy intersection to increase the odds of getting a handout?  Ask for the handout in the first place?  What, exactly, was I getting upset about?

Then it hit me.  I was upset that this seemed to be their job.  When I saw them they were going to 'work.'  But that work involved putting on a grody shirt and pretending to be homeless.  They had probably driven in, parked down the street from the cafe, three or four blocks from their 'office' and then planted themselves where gentle souls would be assured to see them.

I used to live five blocks over and four blocks down from a Salvation Army residence, and I walked to work essentially across the street from it.  I encountered the destitute, the barely-hinged, the drug-addled, and the hopeless every single day.  I bought them cigarettes and handed them spare change and gave them $5 bills on Thanksgiving.  I know homeless people.  These guys weren't.  They were lazy.  That's what I objected to.  Sons of bitches.  They could have honed a talent - that same intersection hosts sax players and tap dancers - but instead they sat around, trying to look pitiable.

I left them alone, and later I saw them run off by the cops.  Who did not, regrettably, use their tasers.  And that's the pity.