Shoes
There's a panhandler I pass on my way to work. He's always got some kind of container -- often a paper bag with the sides rolled down into walls, so it becomes a little dish. He holds it out towards people from the edge of the sidewalk, near the street. He wears a hat and a hooded sweatshirt and his eyes always look half-closed. He mutters something too low to make out, but I always get the impression it's something vaguely hostile. One day I actually passed by him close enough to hear -- he said "you don't care about me." I care a little. I'd like to give him something but I also hate to set the precident, passing by him every day as I do. Which I guess is a little bit terrible of me. But at the same time his aura of mild unpleasantness makes it easier for me to blow him off. (That and the thousands of homeless and beggers swarming the city -- we can't give to every one of them every time, right? -- then again, sometimes I think I should do an experiment: dole out a quarter every time someone asks for change for a week or a month and see how fast it racks up). I wonder where he goes at night, how much money he gets in a day, what he spends it on. I've never seen him with booze that I can think of. Once saw him with a bag of Doritos. Wonder if he gets hot in all those layers when the weather gets warm. Wonder how he chose that particular part of that particular block which frankly, is not the cleverest spot: the shoe store across the sidewalk from where he stands is the perfect foil. When I want to pretend I don't see him, I just check out the shoes.