I was looking at my favourite blog yesterday and its by a twitter friend named Brooke Farmer, she has this program going about feeding the homeless, it made me remember the occasion i too fed a homeless man when i lived in Queensland, i used to walk every day from the house, to the beach at lunch time, it was a 15 minute walk and i used to love it because living in queensland is like being on holidays (vacation) every day.
I used to walk past the RSL club, then there was a park with a pond which had ducks, turtles etc and then through the shopping centre, then a few more steps and the beach was there, i used to sit under a tree and i used to eat there, along the beach there were mexican take away shops, chinese, chicken in fact everything anybody would ever want to eat was there, so every day id show up and have something new, life was great.
Well one morning i noticed a man sitting on a bench and he was dishewelled and looked dirty, ppl used to look a him and walk on the other direction, one woman was having mcdonalds one lunch time and when they left the man went over to the table and ate their left overs, while he was eating the restauran manager kicked him out and threw the left overs in the bin. that arrogant lil fuck annoyed me so the next day i ordered a meal and i put it on the table and called the man over, he sat and ate it and the manager came out to kick him out again but i said "you cant kick him, his mean was just bought here so he can eat it" .
you could see the manager was furious but didnt do anything.
Over the following days every lunch time the man and i struck a friendship, he had no money so i used to buy him lunch and wed talk, he lost his job where he lived and had nothing, his family didnt know where he was because hed run away as he was ashamed to go back, besides even if he wanted to he had no money to go back (he was from anoher state) one day i won some money at the club, i won about 2k so i gave him 200 bucks for a bus ticket home... didnt see him again after that day.
I wonder if he went home, and now he is happy i wonder if he just moved to another town and spent the money on drink, i hope he went home and is living in a house with his family, i guess il never know.
I guess if he is happy now then he was "Healed with a meal"
for you Brooke.
Fantastic story! I hope he's used your kindness to get his life back. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a truly beautiful story. I wish I was (ever) in a position to give that much. Unfortunately, I don't have much myself which I guess is why I come up with Heal With a Meal. It is something that feels so manageable for just about any income level.
ReplyDeleteI know that you don't live in an area where you are inundated with it the way I am here in L.A. but I hope that if you do see someone in need you will feed them, talk to them, and send that story in to the Heal With a Meal address so that I can feature it on the new site.
(I hope you don't mind me totally pumping the program now in your comments box in case any of your readers are interested in helping out.)
The idea behind Heal With a Meal is simple. So many of us give to charity or volunteer over the holidays. But the rest of the year we turn a blind eye. The need is too great so we stop looking. We cannot help everyone so we stop helping anyone. If instead we all committed to making a point to stop and purchase a meal for one person each month we could have a real impact on the homeless population. Add to the meal a smile, a handshake, introduce yourself. The same as you would meeting anyone else. Often they will open up at that point and tell you their story. Then you email me at healwithameal at gmail so that I can publish your experience to the website (coming soon) to inspire others to help.
Cant wait to hear from you!