8.28.2003

"Hey, spare me some change." He said, a foot away from them, waving his sign in their faces. His body language spelling out how he deseved all the loose silver in their purses and he deserved it right now. Maybe the copper too.

It was a pretty typical afternoon walking across the strip mall parking lot. Upper 80's, sun was shining, and the obligitory homeless man was accosting customers on the sidewalk. Shabby clothes, cardboard sign, sporting brand new nikes on his supposedly weary feet.

And they ignored him.

"You've got your whole lives ahead of you, you fat cows!" The three girls just sidesteped him and walked on. He walked on as well, in the other direction. One of those huffy angry walks, where you walk far fast and the red dosen't always let you see where you are going. Turning and twisting all the while to shake your fist at the object that made you so very livid. He turned completely around just as we stepped on to the sidewalk.

"Someday you could be in my situation! Homeless!" He screamed, his face red and his arms making wild, innapropriate gestures in the general direction of receeding backs. "Someday you'll be homeless just like me and that will teach you. Fucking bitch cunts." Still screaming at people who were long gone about how he deserved it, and muttering to everyone, and maybe even God, just how egocentric the people who had it all truly are, he turned and stormed down the sidewalk.

Pushing the door to the sporting goods store open I couldn't help but comment. "Nothing invokes a sense of charity in a person like a mouth full of slander."


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