In a well-practiced rapid fire speech, he explained to me that his church van had run out of gas a couple of blocks away and he desperately needed 10 dollars to drive his van full of children back to Hammond.
"You must be the unluckiest man in the world," I said with a smile after hearing him out.
"Why do you say that?" he asked, a wary look crossing his face.
"Because you had the exact same problem when I was here last week and I didn't give you money that time, either."
"That was a different van," he said, without missing a beat and without a trace of humor in his voice.
Living in New Orleans for 15 years, I got used to being hit up for money by panhandlers, but that was my all-time favorite incident.
Last week I encountered a panhandling first in Memphis at the downtown campus of Southwest Tennessee Community College. A college student actually begged for money. At least I assume she was a college student. She was the right age and she had the look. After the standard "excuse me, sir" she solicited me for a dollar (allegedly to buy a bag of potato chips) inside the school's bookstore. I've been to hundreds of colleges in universities over a three-decade span, and this had never happened before.
I've seen a lot of crazy things on college campuses, but not that.
For many years my policy has been to say no to panhandlers. Always There are several reasons for this but the main one is that any money I gave would likely not be spent in the best interests of the person asking for it.
"I'm sorry, I can't help you," is my standard response. And it's true. Any money I gave would not help the panhandler and would probably be used to advance the poor soul's self-destructive path. The help he or she needs is beyond the ability of a random stranger to give in a chance encounter.
But this particular random encounter threw me, and I violated my longstanding policy for the first time in decades. I gave the "student" a buck and went on my way feeling like a sucker, knowing that it probably didn't go to buy that bag of chips.
Hmmm. You never worked Arizona State University apparently. In the small Tempe town on Mill Ave. it's hard to tell whether you are on or off campus and I get panhandled every time I walk down this street (which is at least once a month). The turning point for me was a few years back during a worktrip to Miami. It seems at every traffic light there are homeless people 'selling' the Homeless Newspaper (Yes, there actually is one). As I rolled down my window to give whatever change I had in my pocket, I took a copy. At dinner that night I needed something to read so I started to read it. I came across an article written by a woman telling her story and it changed the way I deal with homeless panhandlers. The story was not unique, I suppose there are many people in a similar situation, but what took me by surprise was her candid and heartfelt way she said, 'who are you to judge me and tell me what to do with any donation you might give to me. Maybe a bottle of cheap wine is exactly what I need to dull the real physical pain i'm in and get me through another awful, hopeless night'. I sort of understand this argument on some level. My point is that whether I choose to donate or not will no longer have anything to do with what they intend to do with the money. It's really only a matter of do I want to part ways with the dollar or change I have in my pocket. Just another perspective...
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