This week, I had full intentions to write a little something about some weird thought floating around in my head and how it’s peculiar and quirky and makes me a big old bag of Looney Toons, but instead, life threw me a slight curveball. For one of my classes, we have an assignment to figure out how to best solve the problem of homelessness in Gainesville.
After sitting in my room for a little, my group members and I decided that the best way to find out the truth to this problem was to go straight to the source.
It was about 10 after 11pm on a Sunday when we started our venture downtown. We walked past that dreary park where you see people sleeping on the floors, yelling at each other and bathing in the water fountains. Immediately, admittedly so, I could feel the fear radiating off the skin of my friends (and my own) knowing that we were entering into unfamiliar territory. In the distance I spotted one man who would later be known as “Youngblood.” I figured at this point we had come too far for any thoughts of backing out to slip into our reality. I walked right up to the most well crafted 2 square foot cardboard box set up with bags of trash as pillows and lines of old water and Gatorade bottles filled with H20 on the ledge behind my new friend.
Via: gainesvillegap.com
I introduced my friends and myself and we proceeded to get to know “Youngblood.” We knew he was probably hungry and it was past his bedtime and we were intruding, so we went and picked him up some checkers – the 2 for 3 menu never disappoints. We came back to find him in the same spot waiting for us and so happy to see us.
I sat right there on the floor with my chocolate ice cream cone in hand next to my friends who stood and listened to Youngblood tell us his story. As I sat there licking my cone, I asked Youngblood probably 50 questions, none of which had to do with our project. At no point during this 30-minute time period I was talking to this man did I feel like I was talking to a “homeless” person. He told us stories about his daughter who was “making it big in New York with the big bucks” or stories from when he was a truck driver and got into a career ending accident. When we asked him what the hardest thing in life was for him, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he struggled to put one hand on his leg to pry it out of position and upright as he did the same with the other arm and leg. He stumbled to stand upright and looked at us and said, “Standing. I can’t work anymore because I broke my hip, my ribs, and my entire left leg and they never healed right.”
One of the most humbling experiences of my life – sitting on the floor in a park in downtown Gainesville at midnight talking to a man who was originally from Georgia and grew up in Harlem and now resides on the streets of Gainesville – was truly eye-opening. Youngblood is a man that 99% of the people in this city don’t even know exists. A man who (and I apologize if you’re the 1%), that same 99% will probably see and put both hands in their pockets as if he has some homeless person ‘steal your shit’ laser vision and walk quickly in the opposite direction.
Admittedly so, the majority of the time I fall into the 99% category. Tonight, I was the 1% with my friends. Because of that, we made friends with a homeless man. A man who isn’t any different from you or me; he told stories of his family with love in his eyes and his movements just like when you talk about your loved ones. He appreciated the normal social interaction and was desperately trying to give us advice despite his insecurity due to his lack of a proper education.
Via: 100khomes.org
Essentially, there’s no real lesson or point to this read. I think more than anything because I went out there and put myself in a “strange” situation, I was able to learn that much more about humanity and who I am as a person. Feeling so comfortable with a person so quickly that I was able to get right on his level and ask him personal questions about his family and his aspirations made me feel so truly human that it was like drinking the elixir of normalcy. Socioeconomic statuses out the door: we are all equal in one-way or another; it just takes a little affirmative action to truly figure that out.
I know I am going to sleep very well in my soft-lofted fraternity bed and it brings me comfort knowing that Youngblood will be sleeping soundly in his cardboard box bed, conscious that we both made legitimate human connection void of ulterior motives.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is life and the shit that comes with it and I love every goddamn second of it.
Photo courtesy of: PileofPhotos
