Weeds

I'm not a person who expects to be surrounded by perfection all the time.  I mean, perfection is nice, but it's just not realistic to expect it all the time.  The yard at our house is a perfect example of this: the weeds that pop up in the yard don't bother me a bit.  But the last few days, as I would come and go from the house, I noticed that a rather large green weed was pushing it's way up through a crack in the sidewalk right beside my rose vine.  It bothered me, but I never noticed it at a time when I actually had time to stop and do anything about it.

And it's not at all uncommon for life to occur in very much the same way.

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that there have been no new posts here since April 15.  For someone who had blogged every day of the year up until that point, a 17-day gap is sort of a big deal.  But my life, like the crack in my sidewalk, has been sprouting troublesome weeds of its own lately.

The weeds started when my most immediate boss at work arranged to take a leave of absence for personal reasons and then "resigned" instead without any warning or good-byes to those of us who worked for her, and with a barely-plausible story to the bigger bosses.  As a result of her departure, the teacher I work with for the majority of the day was given a temporary promotion to fill her vacated spot for the rest of the school year.  A teacher leaving the classroom meant that I got to go on a wild ride of substitute teachers in and out until we have finally found one who can stick around for the rest of the year.....I hope.  Shortly after, we got to live through the 2 weeks each year that are blocked out and rearranged for students across the state to take the FCAT standardized tests.  Additionally, we've gotten several new students into my classes these last few weeks, many of them bringing new and somewhat unpleasant challenges that I get to learn to cope with.  The former boss was also in charge of our school's Beta Club, and that has now become my responsibility as well.

A New Direction in Life

Seven years ago, on a random day in the middle of a very cold January, I was on my way to visit a friend and happened to drive past a homeless man by the side of the road, shivering noticeably, holding a sign that said, "I'm cold and hungry. Please help me if you can." 

On that particular day, I was pretty broke myself.  I also instantly realized that I had eaten both breakfast and lunch that day and was driving down to road in a heated car on my day off going to visit a friend and hang out watching television all day.  Surely, there was something I could do.  A few blocks down the road, I pulled into a parking spot at a McDonald's restaurant and started digging in my purse, the ashtray, and the floorboards for change.

What I found was enough to buy three double cheeseburgers—they were still on the dollar menu then—and a medium coffee.  I drove back the way I had come, found a spot in a nearby parking lot, and walked toward the man with the food and hot coffee in hand.  When he spotted me, and realized that I was intentionally approaching him, he came in my direction.  Completely unsure of what to say, I wordlessly handed him the bag and cup.  He smiled back at me and turned to walk back and collect his sign and the old milk crate he had been sitting on.  By the time I had walked back to my car, the man had silently melted away into some nearby woods.  I never saw that man again, but I have also never forgotten the genuine smile that crossed his face at the gift of fast food and coffee.

In the years since that day, I have helped when I could.  Sometimes it has been a dollar or a handful of change handed out the window of my car.  Other times it has been a sack of fast food or a few cans extra purchased during a grocery store trip.  The feelings that come after such a small donation last for days, and these encounters make very lasting impressions on my heart and mind.

"Those" Homeless People

If you've driven around Pensacola for any length of time, you have no doubt seen at least a few local homeless sitting or standing roadside, often near high-volume intersections.  Some are holding a sign and hoping to earn enough money to buy something to eat....others are seen just sitting, alone or in groups, by the sides of the roads because they simply have nowhere else to go.  The homeless in our community have been getting a lot of press lately, as the Pensacola City Council and Escambia County Commission have been working overtime trying to pass anti-panhandling ordinances and other regulations limiting where people can sit, lie down, or "camp" without being fined (or worse).  And while the press may bring attention to the already-obvious fact that we have homeless in our community, it's not doing anything to fix the problem.

I don't understand why society spends so much time trying to take more and more away from these people who already have so little!  As a society, we spend millions more annually on providing food, shelter, and health care for our pets than what we spend on aid for the homeless!  How could we have forgotten that these people are still people?

While we're climbing into our clean, safe beds each night with stomachs full of nutritious food, it's easy to feel like that "homelessness" thing could never happen to us.  But we're wrong to be so sure.

"7 out of 10 Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless."  ~Pras Michel

It occurs to me that, thanks to society's mass dehumanization of the homeless, many do not have an accurate idea of exactly who these homeless are.  I had only a very loose understanding of this myself, so I decided to do some research.  Let me share with you some of the basic statistics I found.