Panhandler knows the right strings to pull

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/10/2016 (3471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a mid-morning on an October Saturday in the Exchange District and the slightly-built young man in the black hoodie and sweatpants was walking towards us.

Even from a distance, the way he crossed the street and headed directly for my wife appeared to signal what he wanted; as did his hollowed-out cheeks that we only noticed when he got closer.

He had a question for us.

A question that would later lead me to a question for you.

The soft-spoken young man said he was trying to put together the $11 for a bed at the Salvation Army.

Could we help him?

That was the implied question, even though he didn’t ask directly.

I reached for my wallet, but there was no cash, so Athina opened her purse. While she was looking to see if we had anything for him, I asked the young man where he was from, and how old he was. He was 27, he replied, from Fairford First Nation.

With that he left with $5.

Thinking back, I don’t recall him saying thanks, but if he didn’t, I’m sure that was implied, too. What I do recall him saying before he walked away was he was hungry. Another ask without a direct question.

A short time later, while still strolling the area, we saw him again and this time it was me who approached him. I wanted answers to a few more questions, this time about his life on the street.

Again, the answer I remember most came indirectly; it was the chemical smell on his breath that hadn’t been there before we gave him the five bucks.

Later, when I thought about his gaunt look and those hollowed-out cheeks, I wondered why I chose to ignore a look that should have told me why he really wanted the money. Why was I so quick to want to give him anything when, at other times, in other places, I simply walk by a panhandler? Or, even more often, drive by the ones marching up and down the median with their “anything helps” cardboard signs.

Sometimes, of course, it’s because I don’t have any spare change. Or the traffic light changes. Or there’s something that intuitively tells me “not this one.” None of those answers address the deeper question about why this young man got the five bucks, when so many others I have encountered have got less or nothing at all?

Maybe it was the soft-spoken way he approached us.

Definitely, it was what he said about needing a place to sleep and the preciseness of the $11 he said the Salvation Army charges. That amount rang true to me from past stories about the homeless. As I learned when I called the Sally Ann to check, while they used to charge $11, they don’t anymore. Residential-services manager Mark Stewart confirmed a bed at their emergency shelter is free now, and so is breakfast the next morning.

Anyway, even if I didn’t know that for sure when I encountered the panhandler, I still chose to ignore what was obvious even initially. That he was a drug addict and the money we gave him was about getting a fix in the morning, not a bed for the night.

Or maybe I really didn’t ignore the signal that had literally been staring back at me from his sickly face, because, looking back, I think that’s what moved me to open my wallet and my heart to the young man in the black hoodie.

I saw him as a human being; not a panhandler.

So here’s the question for you?

What moves you to give to people on the street?

And if you don’t…

Brother, can you at least spare an answer?

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca