Unless You Get Them Oxys…

Press for Bell

I know everyone is simply dying to hear more about my daily morning commute. Not a lot has happened, since it was the end of the month and it was raining.

The rain keeps the drug addicts, can collectors, and other assorted homeless nogoodniks turtled up in door jams and other pockets of low hanging shelter. And the end of the month means everyone is out of gobermint money and holed up waiting on their checks.

Though, I did sit next to a guy in acid washed jeans and big scuffed up biker boots, carrying a wooden walking stick/cane. He was on an Obama Phone talking to his doc’s answering machine.

He was announcing that he really needed to be seen today and if he could not get an appointment, he was just going to sit in the waiting room until he could be seen. “Thanks Doctor. And God Bless you,” he said and snapped the Obama Phone closed with a grunted, “sheeeeet.”

As this guy was getting off the bus he struck up a conversation with another guy. This other guy was younger and scruffier and carrying what looked like a stand up bass case strapped to his back. I am sure there was no instrument in there based on the lumpiness of the proportions.

These two started talking about how bad these damn Muni drivers are anymore. Jerking back and forth. “The other day, this little ole lady almost took a knee cuz the way the bus driver was drivin’.”

These guys were walking a few yards behind me as we crossed the streets. I overheard the conversation without even having to try.

“I never take the bus. Well, I did but then I got off methadone.”
“You mean you got back on Hearon.”
(chuckles) “Naw man.”
“I am trying to see the doc to get a refill on the oxys. You can’t just take that bottle in and get them to call. You need to see the doc each time.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So I gotta see the doc today. Get that refilled.”
“Uh huh. I am headed down to the methadone clinic.”
“Back on, huh?”
“Sure. Unless you get them oxys!’
The sound of their wheezy chuckles followed me as I turned heel at the corner.

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Share The Wealth, A Hobo Truism

When I was in high school, especially Senior Year, I spent an amazing amount of my lunch period walking around the general population lunch room. I just made my way up and down the tables of underclassmen asking for spare change. Once I had collected the two or so dollars for the ice cream treat DRUMSTICK (the rounded top kind with the chocolate middle!), I would stop bothering people.

Any left over silver, I would toss into the pile of change that collected on the geek table where I ate my daily peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A sandwich that my father, dutifully and meticulously, made me while he prepared his own brown bag lunch.

The more I think about those daily shakedowns, the more I reassess my high school life. I wonder how I was seen, creeping up and down the aisles, grabbing the back of freshman rubbery plastic chairs, demanding that they answer a simple question – “Got any spare change?” Was it a daily torture, seeing my hunchbacked flannel coming up the row, my little pale paw extended in greedy poverty?

I thought of this, again, this morning, because as walking London, I guided her to the curb to avoid an elderly woman ambling toward us. Luckily, as I dragged my sniffing dog around the tree, I saw the faded purple and green five dollar bill in the street. Without a hesitation, I scooped it up. The rest of the walk, that found money imagined a great number of ways it could improve my life. Sometimes encouraging me to think bigger than its simple currency would purchase.

In realizing how good that free money was making me feel, I thought, almost, immediately to the blonde junkie who is crumbled on the corner of Jones and Sutter, most mornings. I thought about how his day is spent with his filthy outreached hand cupped in moaning begging. How he must gauge time by the amount of money he has collected; how his daily goal might fluctuate based on burning consumption of the addict’s need. Or how he budgets out the meager funds he has collected – how much to spend on food and how much to spend on drugs.

I thought – five dollars might be a whole morning’s work for him. What slight elation I felt at finding that money and having it tempt me with all its various transactions, must be horrendously magnified by the desperate poverty of that corner junkie.

So I decided that if he was sitting at the corner, I would give him the cash. If he was not, I would find another panhandler to shuffle it off on. As I rounded the corner, he was there. Muttering to his knees, not even looking up to ask for any change as I passed. I stopped, handed him the money and said, “I found this in the street and I think it’s yours.” He took the bill without looking at it, telling me that god should bless me.

A few minutes, later he was in the coffee shop buying a hot chocolate with extra chocolate, smiling like a spoiled kid on Christmas morning. Aside from the good feelings all around, I was happy to go back to that silly panhandling place where whatever scant funds that were collected were shared among the group. Share the wealth, was a motto I have never really forgotten.

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