APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING

Real life is stranger than fiction. Sunday night once again proved the truth of this to me.

Several times in the past I have written about apparently homeless men who live nearby. Because I live in the centre of a large city, and possibly also because the Salvation Army has an outreach centre nearby, several men spend most of their days on the corners a couple of blocks away from where I live.

A regular stop to a small (usually overcrowded) McDonald's location on my way home, led into a man and his son sitting at an adjacent table telling me a lot about our local street people. Much of what they had to say I could not have imagined.

It turns out that one fellow who has occupied one corner for the past few years has been arrested because he attacked an elderly woman with a knife. She had told him not to feed the pigeons. Particularly now with the scaffolding blocking ‘his’ corner already, this was creating even more of a problem than he, and the pigeons, normally do.

I never imagined that his brother occupied and lived on the opposite corner across the road. This brother did not bother anyone and kept to himself. Problematically however, the one near the scaffolding, would cross the road and fight with his brother. I suppose this was in between smoking and working on his suntan.

Perhaps we might have sensed a change was coming because a couple of weeks ago, a tirade of filthy words came my way as I passed by suntanned brother. Since he had never spoken to or at me before, I was very surprised. In any case, he has gone to jail. I have been told that his quieter brother has been taken into a shelter.

Meanwhile, The Blanket Man, who this year has become belligerent and vocal as well, turns out to be a member of a wealthy city family. Apparently, a friend and I were probably not mistaken in thinking he had a home/house nearby. He was ‘cleaned up’ once in order to attend a family funeral I am told. However, I expect that this was some time ago since usually he is either sockless or shoe less even in winter and only occasionally changes his outfits. More about him in 2016.

I am confused. It does not get any easier to distinguish who really needs help from among our local homeless corner people. A gift to a shelter or towards an organization that feeds these men and others like them is thus far all I can think of.

I resign myself to the fact that it is at least something that I can do which might possibly be of help to them and/or those who understand better what might actually be of practical help to these men, who appear to have some problems physically and perhaps also mentally.