An Old Scenario in a New Light
The Helping Project is a pledge our family took to help everyone we see that needs it for a year… and to write about what happens.
Not long after kicking off The Helping Project, we went as a family to see Moana again and then headed to our favorite noodle place. We were discussing what was new about this second viewing in the car and it hadn’t really occurred to me that we stopped for a light under an overpass. It didn’t escape Louisa, though, as she quickly spotted a man who was stationed in the median looking for help.
I felt the pangs that I’ve always felt: a bit of indifference, a couple parts skeptical, and a dash of fear. I’m not sure where these feelings come from, when they were instilled in me, or even if I could name an event that scarred me, but this project is helping me realize I need to fix myself.
This man was busy organizing his small pack of gear — kind of crazy that he had his things in the middle of a 6 lane parkway, but I suppose it’s probably also risky to leave it somewhere else when it’s all that you have. After 15 or 20 seconds, he raised his head to see if he had any chance of collecting money and saw that I had my hand out of the window waving him over.
Drive-thru panhandling is an interesting endeavor. You have a small sign — probably because a larger sign is difficult to manage while collecting — that you are hoping is witty, respectful, or pitiful enough to entice people to roll down their windows and give you money. People who, in the Bay Area as well as many other urban regions, are probably in a hurry or have been driving 80mph along a highway to now be stuck at a light or are totally engrossed in their backlog of Medium posts they’ve been meaning to catch up on during stoplights. So, not only are you counting on them to notice you, but you’re counting on them to put their ‘thing’ aside, grab their wallet (and everybody feels conscious about who’s watching when they grab their wallet for a donation), decide on an appropriate amount, and manage to hand it to you while they’re watching the light or trying not to hit you as they drive by. On one hand, you are getting access to a ton of people with at least some loose car change while they are in idle-drive mode, but on the other hand, you are also SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF TRAFFIC! I can’t imagine this could have ever been someone’s dream of a living.
If I ever gave money in the past, it was with as little open-window time as possible. This time, with this project, it was different — I’m seeing it all in a new light. After handing the money over, I kept the window open and prepared for the awkwardness of not having much to say. I didn’t want to ask him how he was doing — of course things haven’t gone well if you find yourself asking for money under an overpass — but I did want to engage and learn something about him in the short time we had before the light changed. He actually broke the ice, commenting on how cold it was given the time of year and cracked a joke about how it’s called “Global Warming.” He quickly followed up with “I totally believe it though” — I mean, we do live in the Bay Area after all. :)
I had a rush of realizations and emotions in that instant. This guy was still mentally with it — he had a quick wit, understood the political climate where he was asking for money, and was completely thankful. His current problem, though, wasn’t easily solved with a bit of cash. He needed blankets, warm clothes, food, and only had maybe an hour before sunset when it would get really cold. I wished I could have helped better — maybe take him on a shopping trip to Safeway or hand him supplies he actually needed like a winter weather kit with blankets, socks, some food, etc.
In the end, it was a brief interaction and we drove off wishing him well and for the weather to break. I handled this better than our previous engagement, but there’s lots of room for improvement. If we’re going to be effective at helping people, we need to get a bit more prepared on how to engage and what our options are for helping. Thinking through this familiar scenario but with a different perspective will definitely help our efforts.
Humans helped total: 8
