Please Forgive Me

Today I almost killed someone. On the drive home from the corner grocery store, I almost drove into a beggar. Alas I must confess that it was no error in judgment, no momentary incoordination, but rather a loss of self control. I was angry. Hopefully the absence of ‘premeditation’ will appease the casual reader. Its just that I saw this cretin, masquerading about the white line, smiling from ear to ear like some spastic jelly-tot shaking his tin like a rusty cowbell. Of course I use the term ‘spastic’ loosely. I don’t want to confuse this chap with the ‘sick’ variety that mimics everything from Polio to Sleeping Sickness in a single change of the robots. They partially deserve more money for braving peak hour traffic in spite of their indeterminable conditions.

And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that an amputee needs more money than some-one who has the flu. And that a woman with a baby deserves more than that old man on death’s door. And those darling children look so innocent and needy. But perhaps your hierarchy of who gets what works a little differently to mine. I’ll assume that we all have limited small change in our cars and can’t give to everyone and so decide who gets what. I at least think that giving one child is worth at least three old people. And a blind person is worth at least two women. I find that I can maximize the feeling of wellbeing and goodness by choosing recipients which are more pathetic or deserving.

Somehow I think they know this. I say this because I’ve noticed a competitive change in the field of begging, an effort if you will. Ironically I see less resolve in much of the employed contingent of our society. For instance, ‘Led Begging’ has become quite popular in Rosebank and Hyde Park. Basically an able bodied assistant guides a blind or obviously ‘sick’ person to your car window so that the impaired may receive money from you without being run over in the intersection. Perhaps it is this ‘teamwork’ that instills in the giver a familial nostalgia and one decides to ‘help a brother out’ in the only way one still remembers how.

And of course I give to the ‘Homeless Talk’ vendors. They wear a neat yellow jacket and they ‘sell’ me something right? That cute little newspaper about homeless people that everyone reads? Those vendors probably pay tax like I do, and may even belong to a union. Ands that’s when I realise they don’t need charity! I don’t even have a job as consistent as theirs! For god’s sake! There are people starving in Africa somewhere and you want me to buy a newspaper? Begging is a cutthroat industry. A career move as foolish as Homeless Talk could mean losing one’s intersection and worse yet, one’s integrity.