True tales of human drama
I've mentioned a time or three that I voulenteer every Thursday evening at a homeless shelter in Vancouver. This is a place, where, unsurprisingly, emotions run pretty strong; you get a lot of people who have personality disorders showing up, and just as many people who honestly have nothing wrong with them but a run of bad luck and are having a tough time coping with it. Naturally, the frisson of all of these personalities in one place and one time can get a little nuts at times.
Actually, to say it's a homeless shelter slightly misclassified it; there's a good deal more than just food and shelter to be had there. There's a room where a big TV and DVD player is set up so folks can enjoy some entertainment in peace, there's a room where haircuts are given by an amateur-but-competent barber can be had, and a "clothing room", where clothes donated from any one of a number of different quarters are made available to anyone who needs them. I tend to work in the clothing room a great deal in the early part of the night; unpacking and sorting the clothes, putting them on display, making sure that no one person takes more than their fair share, keeping fights from breaking out in the room, and then tidying up an hour and a half or so later.
There's this one family - a mother and her two kids - who comes every week. They're obviously not homeless, but equally obviously so deep in economic distress that nobody gives them any guff about taking advantage of the services of the program. There's actually a few people like that that are regulars there. The older of the two kids is a girl (whose name, irritatingly, always eludes me) who I will for the purposes of this story call Francesca. When my friend Ray and I first saw her, we were not altogether sure if she was a girl or a boy; she's around 11 years old, and is consistently dressed in a baggy brown sweatshirt and faded jeans which seem more boyish than girlish, and which were plainly chosen for no reason other than that they were what was available at the time, given extremely limited resources, and her haircut, I suspect, is one she received by above amateur-but-competent barber; there's nothing stylish or feminine about it. It's close-cropped and not too far off from being a brush cut.
Last week, while working the clothing room, I found a bag dominated by children's clothing. This is quite unusual; the clothes we get are - some 99% or so of the time - entirely for adults, which is hardly surprising given that we only have these two kids that ever show up. My guess is that they all came from a single donor; perhaps a family who looked at their 13 year old daughter's clothes from three years prior and said "Well, none of this is going to fit anymore. Might as well give it away". It must have been a rather affluent family if this is the case; it was all quite nice, and quite plentiful. Now, while we normally have this rule about a single person taking more than five articles of clothing all at once, in this case, I figured an exception could be made, since there were no other little girls who would be cheated out of clothes if this one kid took it all. As such, I made the family aware of this treasure trove, and Francesca's face just lit up at the sight of all of these age-appropriate "girly" clothes. Gender stereotypes notwithstanding, it seemed to me she was delighted by the prospect of not being mistaken for a boy so much. After snatching up every available item of clothing, she dashed off to the washroom and got changed into her new pink hoodie, and was obviously elated all the night long. I don't mind telling you, it put quite the smile on my face to be able to have played some small part in something like that.
Mind you, the personal drama isn't always as heart-warming as that. Later that very night as I was working the food line, handing out bread and drinks to people (other people were handling the salad, the stew, the brownies, etc), there was a man - probably in his mid-thirties and looking a little sketchy. At one point, there was another fellow; probably fifteen-or-so years his senior who briefly brushed against him whilst leaving the food line. The first fellow just EXPLODED, pushing and shoving him away in a panic, bellowing at him to keep his distance, keep away from him and all that. He then turned to the girl standing next to me among the servers - an attractive young asian woman whose name I can't recall - and started ranting about how "That guy is obsessed with me! He won't leave me alone! He's always around me, and he's always touching me! I think he's one of the gays!" etc, etc. Once he had left and was comfortably out of earshot, I turned to the girl, and smiling, said to her "I guess when he felt another man touching him, he felt something which compelled him to aggressively extol his heterosexuality and dread of homosexuality to the nearest attractive female as soon as possible and as loudly as possible. You know what they say about people who protest the loudest about their loathing of gays, don't you?" Naturally, being a baptist, she didn't, and I quickly realized I would be doing myself no favours by getting into THAT conversation in this setting. Nevertheless, the whole exchange left me chuckling for some time, especially in light of the degree to which the "obsessed" older gentleman plainly wanted nothing to do with the histrionics of the fellow he had brushed up against, especially once he had his big gay panic of the night.
Small tales of human drama, yo.
Actually, to say it's a homeless shelter slightly misclassified it; there's a good deal more than just food and shelter to be had there. There's a room where a big TV and DVD player is set up so folks can enjoy some entertainment in peace, there's a room where haircuts are given by an amateur-but-competent barber can be had, and a "clothing room", where clothes donated from any one of a number of different quarters are made available to anyone who needs them. I tend to work in the clothing room a great deal in the early part of the night; unpacking and sorting the clothes, putting them on display, making sure that no one person takes more than their fair share, keeping fights from breaking out in the room, and then tidying up an hour and a half or so later.
There's this one family - a mother and her two kids - who comes every week. They're obviously not homeless, but equally obviously so deep in economic distress that nobody gives them any guff about taking advantage of the services of the program. There's actually a few people like that that are regulars there. The older of the two kids is a girl (whose name, irritatingly, always eludes me) who I will for the purposes of this story call Francesca. When my friend Ray and I first saw her, we were not altogether sure if she was a girl or a boy; she's around 11 years old, and is consistently dressed in a baggy brown sweatshirt and faded jeans which seem more boyish than girlish, and which were plainly chosen for no reason other than that they were what was available at the time, given extremely limited resources, and her haircut, I suspect, is one she received by above amateur-but-competent barber; there's nothing stylish or feminine about it. It's close-cropped and not too far off from being a brush cut.
Last week, while working the clothing room, I found a bag dominated by children's clothing. This is quite unusual; the clothes we get are - some 99% or so of the time - entirely for adults, which is hardly surprising given that we only have these two kids that ever show up. My guess is that they all came from a single donor; perhaps a family who looked at their 13 year old daughter's clothes from three years prior and said "Well, none of this is going to fit anymore. Might as well give it away". It must have been a rather affluent family if this is the case; it was all quite nice, and quite plentiful. Now, while we normally have this rule about a single person taking more than five articles of clothing all at once, in this case, I figured an exception could be made, since there were no other little girls who would be cheated out of clothes if this one kid took it all. As such, I made the family aware of this treasure trove, and Francesca's face just lit up at the sight of all of these age-appropriate "girly" clothes. Gender stereotypes notwithstanding, it seemed to me she was delighted by the prospect of not being mistaken for a boy so much. After snatching up every available item of clothing, she dashed off to the washroom and got changed into her new pink hoodie, and was obviously elated all the night long. I don't mind telling you, it put quite the smile on my face to be able to have played some small part in something like that.
Mind you, the personal drama isn't always as heart-warming as that. Later that very night as I was working the food line, handing out bread and drinks to people (other people were handling the salad, the stew, the brownies, etc), there was a man - probably in his mid-thirties and looking a little sketchy. At one point, there was another fellow; probably fifteen-or-so years his senior who briefly brushed against him whilst leaving the food line. The first fellow just EXPLODED, pushing and shoving him away in a panic, bellowing at him to keep his distance, keep away from him and all that. He then turned to the girl standing next to me among the servers - an attractive young asian woman whose name I can't recall - and started ranting about how "That guy is obsessed with me! He won't leave me alone! He's always around me, and he's always touching me! I think he's one of the gays!" etc, etc. Once he had left and was comfortably out of earshot, I turned to the girl, and smiling, said to her "I guess when he felt another man touching him, he felt something which compelled him to aggressively extol his heterosexuality and dread of homosexuality to the nearest attractive female as soon as possible and as loudly as possible. You know what they say about people who protest the loudest about their loathing of gays, don't you?" Naturally, being a baptist, she didn't, and I quickly realized I would be doing myself no favours by getting into THAT conversation in this setting. Nevertheless, the whole exchange left me chuckling for some time, especially in light of the degree to which the "obsessed" older gentleman plainly wanted nothing to do with the histrionics of the fellow he had brushed up against, especially once he had his big gay panic of the night.
Small tales of human drama, yo.