Street Roots

There's a guy who is frequently outside my coffee shop who sells a newspaper published by a local charity.  The people who sell this paper get to keep most of the sale price and they generally aren't in the 1% of our society.  In the past I had a tendency to look through people like this, as if they didn't exist, part of my "I'm better than you or I'm worse than you - it has to be one or the other" philosophy of life.  So I make the effort to get to know guys like this on a very casual basis.  He's a nice guy - likable and friendly.

There's also a guy around bumming money from patrons who has definitely taken the substance abuse elevator way, way down.  I give him a buck or whatever change I have, under no illusion that it's going for anything but alcohol.  Sometimes he wanders off, mumbling to himself, then wanders back and asks me for some more money, totally forgetting that I just forked over something.

I asked the newspaper guy about him.

"I buy him a beer sometimes," he said.  "The stores won't sell it to him."
He shrugged: "I don't know if it's the right thing to do or not, but he wants a beer."

I told him I was in The Fellowship.  That got him talking.  He knew about The Fellowship.

"My mom was in for over 50 years.  She knew the founders," he said.  He talked about growing up in a household when our Program was in its infancy, when drunks sobered up in personal homes.  12 Step calls could be wild and woolly.  The answering service rang right into their home when his mother was volunteering; if she wasn't home then he answered the phone.  It made me think about how bitchy I can get when some volunteer working at the answering service doesn't have all the information right at the tip of his fingers.  I'm assuming his kid would probably be less helpful.

It was a good talk.