The Homeless Guy Who Wasn’t Quite Homeless
A Twitter suggestion led to a conversation I’ll never forget.
Unlike some people, I don’t dedicate an entire month to my birthday. So when my boss asked me to dinner seven days after, it was a bit awkward. But I took him up on the offer because a) who turns down free food? and b) dinner was the perfect occasion to do some politicking without it seeming forced.
Over drinks and salmon, we joked about age, this recurring gray I’d found earlier this year, and sports. The subject then moved to how ridiculously hot the weather has been. It’s not just DC. Across the country, people are fighting oppressive, disrespectful ass temperatures for the second year in a row. For as brutal as the winter is, we get it just as bad in the summer. The heat had become so bad that several clients had canceled afternoon workout sessions.
“That reminds me, we need to re-stock our Fiji. I noticed some of the reqs’ are sitting in my inbox,” my boss’ arbitrary statement called something to memory from over the weekend.
“Hey, do you guys ever give water to the homeless?” I asked to the group of five.
They all looked at me, confused but curious.
“You mean Fiji?” one of them asked.
“Well, no. Just water. Like regular bottled water,” I said.
They looked at each other,, then back at me and shrugged.
My boss was the only one who answered verbally: “No, it’s easier to not make eye contact if I can help it”.
Homeless people are the invisible people in our society. We view them as nuisances. We rarely acknowledge them except to step over them on the street, make fun of them, or report them to authorities. The vast majority of homeless people aren’t violent or disturbed. They aren’t always on drugs or deviants. Many don’t fit the stereotypes that society would have you believe. In fact, there are some homeless people who aren’t homeless at all in the literal sense.
Due to the extreme high temperatures, someone I follow on Twitter made the suggestion to take bottles of water out to those that we saw on the streets. To be honest, this simple idea had never occurred to me. We as a culture put a lot of emphasis on outreach during the winter season. However, something as basic as water in this sweltering heat can be the difference between life and death.
Because of my work schedule, I can’t always donate man hours to pantries or events like Hashtag Lunchbag. Handing out water on a Saturday after work was easy and convenient for me, though. That was my act of service. I had no idea that I’d cross paths with someone who’d remind me of what really matters in life.
I met a man named Daniel*. I noticed him sitting at the bus stop in a striped v-neck, cargos, and old (but not too old) Air Max sneakers. He certainly didn’t “look” homeless. But after seeing the bus go by and him not get on it, I approached him and found out a bit more about his situation.
He’d been living out of his car for awhile, separate from his girlfriend and son. After losing everything, he had to make the decision to either have them all living on the street or let his girlfriend and his son go live with her family up in Baltimore. He made the sacrifice to have his family live apart until he got his life back on track.
Initially, he was reluctantly to open up beyond that. When you’re on the street, it’s impossible to trust anyone. You also find it hard to believe in the idea of a Good Samaritan. And I wasn’t aiming to be that for him. Although, in the only way I knew how, I expressed to Daniel that every man needs to be heard. Sometimes, a man just needs to let shit out so that his shoulders can feel a little lighter. I never really had that outlet. If that was only thing I could offer Daniel on that day, then so be it.
We walked to a nearby deli and once he started talking he couldn’t stop. In the span of those short 15–20 minutes, he’d shared with me how hard it was to be away from his son. He talked about how the only thing that woke him up every day was his son.
For a lot of homeless people, what keeps them from crossing the point of no return is knowing that somewhere they have a home to go to. They have a person who represents what home is.
As I listened to Daniel talk about his son, it dawned on me that I wasn’t sitting next to a homeless man. I wasn’t sitting next to someone who was invisible. I was sitting next to a little boy’s dad. I was sitting next to a man with a dream, a man who had simply fallen on hard times. I was sitting next to a guy whose shoes I could have easily been sitting in had luck not have found me.
When you’re at zero, everything is a positive.
Luck, destiny, fate, whatever you want to call it, it’s a funny thing. Everyone’s version of it plays out differently. The conversation I had with Daniel reminded me of how good God is. It reminded me of how no matter how bad things get, we somehow find our bearings.
If I shared half of the things that I’ve been through in my life, people would probably wonder how am I not dead or in jail. A lot of us have pasts like that. But we’re still here. We’re still breathing. We’re still trying. We’re still failing. We’re still doing. We’re still living.
For Daniel, I was able to bless him by giving him a few bucks to take the train to see his son. I don’t know how that visit turned out.
Maybe I’ll run into him again someday. Maybe I won’t.
Homeless people are individuals with rich stories who are worth more than just averted glances and your loose change.
*Daniel was not his real name.
