I hate Wednesdays. More appropriately, I hate what Wednesdays bring. I got another “street cleaning” ticket. I think the trick to not getting tickets is to own your own driveway. That’s what really steams my gourd. We’ve got two spaces in a garage and I didn’t use the one that’s currently available, leaving it to one of my roommates. ‘Tis better to give than to receive. And that’s all there is to say about that.
On the flip side, I recently paid a certain amount of money to State Farm for car insurance. Since turning 25 my insurance dropped by almost half of what I had been paying. Well, I usually send two payments, half each. Just today I received a reimbursement check for the half of the amount I had already paid. State Farm called it an overpayment. And I also received a notice that informed me that I needed to pay the other half by December. I’m sure it’s an accounting error, and I’ll have to write another check. Nevertheless, it somewhat mitigates the effects of LA’s extortion.
Los Angeles is experiencing a bit of cooler weather here lately. It’s been nice. It reminds me of autumn, only with palm trees instead of the deciduous trees that line the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m pretty sure palms don’t turn different colours, though one can hope. They do have lemon trees here, which seem to be retaining their brilliant green.
I’m too young to have much of an impression of the world. I see and hear things, read the news and books and feel the pangs of societal upheavals and the mundane everydayness of…well, everyday. I appreciate the good things, get miffed at the things that get me miffed, and ever so often do something monumentally stupid as to add another note to the ledger of my life, like angelic writing that will get reviewed and analyzed, the dust blown off when my time has come, and I’m asked “Why?” I suppose that’s part of life, the stupid things you do that you don’t think about. At the time it seemed like a good thing. Or it didn’t seem like anything at all, just an act, just a thought, just a moment in which an occurrence happened. Clinical terms cover a multitude of sins.
So the story is, I’m walking down the street, by myself, and I’m approached by a crazy man. He’s gotta be, right, because no one in their right mind would dress or look the way he does. Teeth rotting, unshaven, a wild eyed stare, he’s muttering to himself, and as I draw closer I hear what he’s saying. It’s not something I can repeat on this blog. Suffice to say, he was very upset an an unnamed party, and villified them in stark terms. I approached and he saw me, and he raved some more toward me. It is a frightening prospect to be raved at, somewhat less so to be raved toward. Still, the usual plan is to pick up the pace and ignore, or at least offer a sympathetic eye and then hurry on.
This last option I did, and he responded with gesticulation and cursing, and somehow my mouth moved faster than my brain. I said something back to him. Something smart, something which was better left unsaid. I don’t even remember what it was exactly, but my brain caught up with me and propelled my legs faster, and I could hear him wagging off like I had just cursed his mother. Whatever I had said, it upset him.
That, in and of itself, is not surprising. What is surprising is it made me feel good. Most people sort of feel indifferent or sorry for crazy people/bums. Until recently, I did too. Now I look at them with annoyance. What makes them so special that they can feed off the goodwill of passersby and not contribute anything to the community? What gives them the right to be the pariahs of what might otherwise be a clean neighbourhood? Why should I feel guilty whenever they ask for change and I have none? Just once I’d like to go up to a bum on the street and ask them if they have $.35 for a phone call, or a dollar for some food. I don’t know, if I could heckle and curse and mutter with impunity and receive looks of pity in return, maybe I would do it more. But I’d have to go to a lot of trouble. Because you can’t heckle someone when you’re wearing good duds. So you gotta get gussied up with ragged clothes; you gotta find a shopping cart somewhere that you can put random crap in and push around; you gotta smear crap all over your skin to simulate not having taken a shower in the past six months; you gotta do all this stuff and then, all you get is a lousy pitying look from strangers on the street?
It’s not worth it. Just go out and get a job–it’s a lot easier than playing a bum.
UPDATE: Since trackbacks don’t seem to work on my site anymore, I’ll incestuously link to Greg’s piece on street beggars (his post links to mine, hence the incestuousness of it all), in which he goes much further than I in categorizing and describing the differing levels of street begging. My favourite is the Seinfeldian sounding Low Talker.