Hello again;
So I'm back behind the keyboard again and it's a good place to be on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. It has been a fairly uneventful couple of days, seeing my grand daughter on Friday night is a tough act to top. Last night I saw "Mike/Leo"..( still cannot get a straight answer as to his name), and talked to him for a while, I had a bag of food for him and had to go to my "hidey-hole" to get it and he would not follow me on to that particular parking lot, because he says he's afraid of getting a trespassing charge from the police. Now everybody and their brother walks across this parking lot from the food store on the way to Reisterstown Rd. He acts paranoid and carries himself in such a manner that if you were to see him, you'd almost automatically think he was looking for something to steal or looking over his shoulder to avoid the police. I tried to explain to him that he's trapped himself in a vicious circle, a self fulfilling prophecy as it were...'look suspicious...and..people will suspect you', but he tries to rationalize it by saying that he is looking out against being jumped...(in the middle of an empty lot, with sight lines of 200-300 yards?, in a 7-11, peeking up at the mirrors and security cameras?). I could not get through to him. I found out that he had been on the streets for at least 10 years, having burned through many, many opportunities to get off. It now explains a lot. I also acquired another piece of the puzzle regarding his accumulation of trespassing, 4th degree burglary, theft, and 'bannings', and the 'grain of salt' with which I had already taken such revelations, (which were ALL explained away as being in the wrong place in the wrong time, mistaken identity, or police harassment,) turned out to be a fist sized crystal of Na Cl...you can't con an old...
con(man). He wonders why the police look at me, and either say hello, occasionally engaging me in conversational questioning if it is late at night or some similar situation, or, basically ignore me as just a pedestrian. I neither love nor hate cops in general, and my first reaction upon being question, whether I (believe) am in the right or wrong, is NOT aggression, denial, and/or confrontation, just common politeness until I know the reason. Perception works both ways!!.
There was a fellow in the Starbucks this morning, homeless, and, it seemed, whatever the PC term is today..no disrespect is intended...mildly retarded, he had made purchases and was just hanging out for a minute, saying hello to everyone and explaining that he could not work to day because of the weather. The kind of sweet but annoying person that after a few minutes you wish would leave,(and unable to pick up on social clues), but too nice to be rude to. He had used up the last of the cash on a Starbucks gift card and was sitting by the door as I went to step outside. He asked me if I had any change to spare and I told him no...I then motioned him outside and told him that if he continued to solicit in the coffee shop, the manager would ask him to leave, and then gave him a dollar. He asked if I was at the city's Code Blue shelter last night, and said I looked familiar from there, I told him no, but I was homeless also, and did not want to see him banned from the coffee shop, and he was like a grateful puppy.....Sometimes I seem to collect the 'needy' like fleas....LOL...and sometimes they are just as hard to get rid of....I mean Geez, I'll talk with almost everyone...but not 24/7...LOL!!!!.I'm still waiting to be "collected" myself...HA!
okay time's up for now.......more later, maybe...........Dave
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