Professional Pan Handler Pockets $50 an Hour

by kwr 14 Replies latest social current

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  chickpea

  the one time we ever were approached by a homeless man, he asked for money so he could eat..... and rather than give him money, the hub went into the nearby subway and got him a footlong meat sandwich and gave it to him and left

  prolog>>> being "good witnesses" we turned the car around and went back to witness to him and found him in the alley behind the subway splitting his sandwich with 3 other guys, all of them with that entourage of funk keeping them well guarded.....

  we got them all sandwiches and left literature..... the first guy asked if he could hug me

  my older son, who was 5 at the time, remembers that event some 18 years later
• 

  Casper

  Chickpea,

  Experiences like that make me cry..... You seem like a really kind hearted person...

  We just never know how much our kindness effects others.

  Sincerely,

  Cas
• 

  CaptainSchmideo

  Reminds me of a line of dialogue from "The Fisher King", where Jeff Bridges is talking to a homeless vet who is panhandling in New York City:

  
  Disabled Veteran: He's payin' so he don't have to look. See... guy goes to work every day, eight hours a day, seven days a week. Gets his nuts so tight in a vice that he starts questioning the very fabric of his existence. Then one day, 'bout quitting time, Boss calls him into the office and says, "Hey Bob, whyncha come on in here and kiss my ass for me, will you?" Well, he says, "Hell with it. I don't care what happens, I just want to see the expression on his face as I jab this pair of scissors into his arm."
  [sighs]
  Then he thinks of me. He says, "Waitaminit. I got both my arms, I got both my legs. At least I ain't begging for a living. Sure enough, Bob's gonna put those scissors down and pucker right up. See, I'm what you call kind of a "moral traffic light", really. I'm like sayin', "Red! Go no further! Boooo-ee boooo-ee boooo-ee...”
• 

  JoyNichols

  There will always be people who 'take advantage.' That doesn't mean we should give up helping each other. Greed has many faces.
• 

  JoyNichols

  the one time we ever were approached by a homeless man, he asked for money so he could eat..... and rather than give him money, the hub went into the nearby subway and got him a footlong meat sandwich and gave it to him and left

  prolog>>> being "good witnesses" we turned the car around and went back to witness to him and found him in the alley behind the subway splitting his sandwich with 3 other guys, all of them with that entourage of funk keeping them well guarded.....

  we got them all sandwiches and left literature..... the first guy asked if he could hug me

  my older son, who was 5 at the time, remembers that event some 18 years later

  Chickpea, that made me cry.

  At a clinic where I work, they have left-overs all the time - untouched sometimes.

  A few weeks back they had bags and bags of individual dinners left over, untouched, in the fridge.

  I happened to get a ride from a cabbie because my car wasn't running.

  I asked her if she ever sees homeless people on her runs; I have some dinners she could give out (or just keep and take home if she wanted to). I offered her about half a dozen boxes of dinners.

  Turns out, she works for the homeless and hungry through her church. The food I offered her just happened to be about the number of homeless people she sees each night.

  We had a nice chat about helping people, compassion, and what it means to be human - giving without expectation, whether or not the recipients seemed deserving.

  After all, how much of the good things that we have are always deserved? Often times we're just lucky (or not) and so are our fellow humans struggling with hunger, homelessness, drug addiction.

  Some have better coping tools than others, and some are prettier and luckier and do better than others because of it. And some are asses. Just like every where else. Can't give up on humanity because of that . . .