Homelessness is a major problem in the bay area, where I now make my home. In December, I had an interesting encounter with an apparently homeless woman. It’s stuck with me, so I thought I’d share it.
I had just started a new job working out of my home office, and I headed in to an office of my company in an industrial section of San Francisco to present my passport for I-9 verification. I hopped on a bus that was headed down Market street. At some point, several homeless people boarded, all of them showing signs of poor health. I got up and offered my seat to a woman, apparently in her 50’s, who was complaining loudly about her legs. Nearby was a young mother whose toddler kept fussing noisily while she was trying to text. I watched, feeling a little annoyed with the mother for paying more attention to her phone than her child. In order to feel a little more useful, I started thinking of ways I could distract the child.
But the homeless woman was watching the mother and child too. Suddenly, she reached into her garbage bag of personal possessions and handed the mother what looked like an LOL doll. “This should keep him busy for 30 minutes — maybe a little less if he’s smart, which he probably is.” It worked, and the mother was able to finish her task while her baby boy investigated the LOL doll happily.
A bit later, we had one of those human traffic jams with several people needing to get off the bus. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be shouting at an Asian man who was blocking the way, totally unaware of what was happening. I jumped into the situation, tapping the guy on the shoulder and pointing, while trying to somehow soothe everyone’s agitation, saying something like “It’s OK, he just wasn’t understanding.” As the crowd exited the bus, the homeless woman fixed me in her gaze and the following dialog ensued:
Homeless lady: “Will you just stop trying to correct everything I say? That’s all you’ve been doing for the last 5 minutes.”
Me: (Abashed) “Well, I was just trying to help the situation, and I -”
Homeless lady: “Well, you’re not. You don’t know shit. You just …[something unintelligible to me]..”
Me: “Well, I did give you my seat.”
Homeless lady (Softening a little): “That’s true… You don’t know what it’s like to have spider bites all over your legs.”
Me: (with a hint of snark at first) “Yes, that’s something I’ve been lucky enough to avoid.”
Homeless lady: “You ARE lucky.” (with profound conviction )
Me: “I KNOW.” (this time, with real conviction of my own now)
We both became quiet for the rest of our rides.
You know, people who are close to me have complained for years about my “correcting” them when it wasn’t necessary, when there was hardly anything to correct. It’s an idiosyncrasy of mine that’s probably annoyed others, but few people ever call me out on it.
And of course, she was right that I am lucky. I have a roof over my head, a good job, and people who love me and appreciate my abilities.
In the very short time I spent with her, I could easily see her intelligence, resourcefulness, kindness, and a special kind of ornery integrity. It seems to me that any one of these qualities ought to have earned her a clean, safe place to live.
I wonder where she’s sleeping tonight.
