Gimme Gimme (Never Gets)
I'm starting to get really tired of being asked for money. I do feel sorry for homeless people. I can't imagine how awful it must be to live on the street, with nothing but the clothes on your back and whatever money you can scrounge. Add to that the alcoholism or drug addiction or both that led them to the street, and I can double not-imagine that.
However, and this kind of goes back to what I wrote about yesterday ... when do people stop bitching about how miserable their life is and actually do something about it?
There's a guy I've been seeing in my neighbourhood for at least the past year. This guy is not your typical homeless type. He's in his late 30s or 40s, and he sits outside a chain drugstore in a reasonably posh area of town and has a sign with him that says, "Family of 3, Need Money, No Job", something like that. This guys wears a jacket and pants, dusty and dirty, but a jacket and pants. Anyway, every time I see this guy I get angry. If he has no job, why the fuck doesn't he get off his ass and go get one? Especially if he has a family of 3 to support? I'll be damned if I give this guy money, and I never have.
It seems like every two steps I go these days I get accosted for money. The other day I was walking up the same street with some shopping bags in my hand and some scruffy guy saw me coming and stuck his hand out, saying, "Spare me some change?" This seems to happen to me way more often than it used to. It's getting so I dread walking down the street with shopping bags, because then they know you've spent money, and for sure they'll bug you.
On the large scale of things, I'm not that much better off than these people. Obviously, I have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and I'm working a good deal of the time now and have some extremely good prospects for full-time work. But I barely get by. I have rent to pay, groceries to buy, gas to buy, you name it. I'm not trying to minimize their struggles by comparing them to my own, but I'm really starting to resent being seen as a target for a handout every single place I go.
To top it off ... and this is on a larger scale ... yesterday on the net I saw a headline about Bono bitching because the Canadian budget doesn't leave enough room for foreign aid. Now, I love Bono. I have been in awe of him since the early '80s, when I first heard him and his famous bandmates. But his political agendas have now graduated from being merely tiresome to extremely nauseating. I mean, here's a guy whose net worth alone could probably feed who knows how many countries in Africa and other parts of the world, pay for their medicines, and put all their kids through college. And he's hitting normal working people up for their money. It kills me how all these celebrities are so quick to lend their names to certain causes but when it comes to putting up their own money, it's a different story.
Come on, man, give me a break. I'm just a working single mother, not a poor people's ATM machine.
However, and this kind of goes back to what I wrote about yesterday ... when do people stop bitching about how miserable their life is and actually do something about it?
There's a guy I've been seeing in my neighbourhood for at least the past year. This guy is not your typical homeless type. He's in his late 30s or 40s, and he sits outside a chain drugstore in a reasonably posh area of town and has a sign with him that says, "Family of 3, Need Money, No Job", something like that. This guys wears a jacket and pants, dusty and dirty, but a jacket and pants. Anyway, every time I see this guy I get angry. If he has no job, why the fuck doesn't he get off his ass and go get one? Especially if he has a family of 3 to support? I'll be damned if I give this guy money, and I never have.
It seems like every two steps I go these days I get accosted for money. The other day I was walking up the same street with some shopping bags in my hand and some scruffy guy saw me coming and stuck his hand out, saying, "Spare me some change?" This seems to happen to me way more often than it used to. It's getting so I dread walking down the street with shopping bags, because then they know you've spent money, and for sure they'll bug you.
On the large scale of things, I'm not that much better off than these people. Obviously, I have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and I'm working a good deal of the time now and have some extremely good prospects for full-time work. But I barely get by. I have rent to pay, groceries to buy, gas to buy, you name it. I'm not trying to minimize their struggles by comparing them to my own, but I'm really starting to resent being seen as a target for a handout every single place I go.
To top it off ... and this is on a larger scale ... yesterday on the net I saw a headline about Bono bitching because the Canadian budget doesn't leave enough room for foreign aid. Now, I love Bono. I have been in awe of him since the early '80s, when I first heard him and his famous bandmates. But his political agendas have now graduated from being merely tiresome to extremely nauseating. I mean, here's a guy whose net worth alone could probably feed who knows how many countries in Africa and other parts of the world, pay for their medicines, and put all their kids through college. And he's hitting normal working people up for their money. It kills me how all these celebrities are so quick to lend their names to certain causes but when it comes to putting up their own money, it's a different story.
Come on, man, give me a break. I'm just a working single mother, not a poor people's ATM machine.
posted by emily pound at 5:07 PM
7 Comments:
I LOVE YOU! lol I have been saying that for ages, all these celebrities out there saying "Give them your money" and they give what? $15,000(US)? Nevermind they make fifteen, twenty, thirty fourty million per movie, per tour, per whatever the hell they do. It drives me insane that they're so high and mighty and yet can't part with their Prada bags for a fashion statement of the moment to feed lets say a small village in African for a year or two. Yeah. Logical.
And my dad used to go find homeless men and offer them jobs, sometimes they worked and were grateful, and sometimes they were lazy and didn't deserve the change they'd been given. Or they had warrents for their arrest. lol
~Lily
I agree, you can't give to everyone and it does get tiring sometimes...
(please don't say ATM machine!)
Lily -- these celebrities and their causes of the moment have been driving me crazy for years. And it truly makes me ill when I read about how much money they make a year. Good God.
Ian -- why? :-)
Because the M in ATM stands for machine. So you are saying Automated Teller Machine machine.
Please tell me you don't also say PIN Number...
Ahhhh, I see ... I am guilty, I say PIN number too, I have to admit. You're right, it's annoyingly redundant. I'll try not to do it anymore. :-)
I agree with you. albuquerque has a lot of homeless people. Most of them look pretty bad but a few I have seen look as if they could get a job if they wanted one.
Torren, I've often thought that too. I sometimes feel like saying "after you eat the dog, then I'll give you money" :)
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