I’ve gotten so hard from living around here, and I wish I hadn’t. I went out yesterday to get some tissues and cold medicine, and there was this kid standing outside the Walgreen’s — dirty fingernails, but otherwise pretty clean. Mixed Asian kid with freckles, clearly gay. He started in with a long, convoluted, hard-luck story about how he was stranded with some other kids from his group home, and when I pressed him, he said “I’m not supposed to be here.” Then he said he was taken away from his parents and send to the home when he was 13 (I doubt Bucks County is sending their kids here) and finally, I just stopped him.
“Look, every drug addict in this neighborhood has some story like yours, and it’s always very smooth and polished, and I just don’t believe you,” I said. He started to cry.
I explained that I had my own problems, and he needed to take responsibility for his. “You weren’t supposed to come here, right? Now you’re trying to make it my responsibility to help you. Sorry,” I said.
The funny thing is, not five minutes before, I gave money to a homeless guy who was standing in the intersection, begging for change. I didn’t think twice about it; I guess I just figured, “At least this guy’s really working for it.” Because it was cold, and pouring down rain.
I don’t feel the compassion anymore, and it really bothers me. I’d like to get back to that.
I’m sort of careful who I’ll give money to, because I don’t have much to begin with. My Social Security Disability is the only income for two of us, and half of that goes toward rent. I still occasionally give $5 to the lady in the wheelchair in the FoodMaxx parking lot, and whatever loose change I have I try to give away just to not deal with it. Last year I got a small inheritance, which is gone now (it paid for a used car and our move out of the old foundry building we hated so much) but for a while I had a few shekels in my bank account, and I was, indeed more generous. I think it’s the whole I-remember-being-homeless-and-addicted-myself thing that causes me to want to help. Those same memories cause me to not give anything to people with bad manners, though, and spielers like you described almost never get anything.
I keep getting accosted inside fast food restaurants while I’m eating. I can’t tell the bs sob stories from the legit ones. I had a girl in tears the other day at Wendy’s downtown telling me about her sick boyfriend two blocks away on the street with a fever. She was simpering so much I couldn’t understand what else she was asking for, but I sure wasn’t going to take a pair of possibly underage teens in my car anywhere much less to my house. I gave a buck plus loose change and left. No more fast food restaurants near downtown again