My shelter reports tend to focus on the good side of what happens there because that's mostly what I see, and how I look at the world.
I adopt that view toward the homeless especially, because so many see them as dependent, irresponsible, addicted, criminal, etc. In writing about the places I volunteer, I want to expose others to the good and hopeful moments I experience.
In fact, today, one of our homeless volunteers was being interviewed about a program he helped start that organizes homeless people to pick up trash in city parks.
But of course, it's not all like that.
Today a couple came into the Day Center for the first time, on their way back to Utah from Denver. They had little beyond the clothes they wore — not even a backpack. The man carried a small plastic bag and an aluminum baseball bat. He had two black eyes and his right eye was very bloodshot. When he took off his sweatshirt, you could see his soft, beefy upper arms were badly bruised.
In Denver, 12 people beat him, he said, just for shit and giggles. He was carrying the bat now for self-defense. You could see him hover protectively around his wife. (We're not legally married, he told me, but we consider ourselves married.)
He and his wife signed up for showers. I set them up with shampoo, soap and towels. He asked if we had razors. Sorry, he said. Toothbrushes and toothpaste? Sorry again.
I told him no need to be sorry — that's why we're here.
A regular guest — call him Craig — is a paranoid schizophrenic. Some days he seems clear-eyed and normal, and he talks about his plans for a trip to North Dakota. Other times, he looks all right, but his conversation wanders into non sequiturs.
Today he had a roughed look and three-days growth of beard. He told me Walt Disney used to have a picture of the Navy upside down in his office. I'm an actualist, he said, and so was Hitler.
Craig is bright, but he sees things we don't see. His mind won't stop racing and it pulls together bits of knowledge from all over and mashes it together the way most of us do in our dreams. But Craig is awake, and this is his reality.
His sad story goes back to his childhood, when he was dumped at a Catholic boarding school by his parents, who then disappeared from the picture.
When he left the Day Center, he had a wild look in his eyes that was different from his earlier, confiding expression when he was telling me how the first U.S. nuclear tests had actually been conducted in the pyramids and had extinguished the ancient civilizations.
How did they do that, I asked.
Time travel, he said.
Later, as I was riding home, I heard a loud voice exclaiming. As I approached, I saw Craig, walking alone.
A block further, I ran into two men in ties, looking in his direction. One was talking on a cell phone.
I'm afraid Craig is headed for trouble again, and no one will be able to divert him.
And for the Craigs and black-eyed batsmen, it seems like fewer people are willing to try.
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