Rubbing Elbows with the Hobos
Rubbing Elbows with the Hobos
I was only five and half miles into my bike ride to work and I had already passed three individual homeless people pushing shopping carts full of trash. Upon cresting the steepest hill of the journey I was winded and out of breath when a young black man strolling down the hill waved his hand to get my attention. The man was wearing surgical scrubs and chatting on a cell phone that he held away from his ear for a moment to speak to me. Hesitatingly I stopped, regretting my loss of momentum but feeling somewhat obliged to help the man with what I was expecting to be directions to the near by medical school or hospital. “Yeah,” I said coming to a halt out of breath. “Do you have a dollar or two dollars?” the man asked still holding the cell phone away from his ear. “What! Are you Serious?” I yelled, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to ride a bike up this hill? Look at my clothes I am a poor person. I am riding a bike to a minimum wage job seven and a half miles each way. You stopped me to ask for that?!?!?” I knew as I was yelling at the man that he was becoming overwhelmed and he was presenting himself as a vagrant, twice my size, not the type of person I wanted to make angry. Yet, I could not stop myself from reacting honestly to the beggar with the cell phone. Still somewhat winded by the hill I continued ranting, ” I ride fifteen miles a day on a bike to a minimum wage job!” “O.k. I”m sorry,” he replied ” I am sorry I did not mean to bother you,” he said as he pushed the end button on his cell phone and slipped it into his pocket. He put both of his hands up in the air in a defensive manner and in a submissive apologetic way began backing away down the hill. I shook my head in disgust, caught my breath and began the upward climb again with two more miles left to go. I could of been more kind to the man I thought to myself as I continued onward and upward over the railroad tracks and interstates towards the bridge. I could of been more kind to the man I repeated in my mind again, but damn. He was still young with more fat on his bones then I had and talking on a cell phone. He was not pushing a shopping cart full of his own possessions. I rode on determined to take different bike routes in the future.
Jessica Logsdon – Occupy Kansas City Journal – 2012
Occupy KC protest Whiteman Air Force Base The Occupied Times of London