The Homeless Guy

There's a guy who's moved into a small camper trailer down the road from me. Over the last few weeks I've had a chance to talk with him a bit. One evening he came over to play cards.

The guy was homeless for 5 years and living in Rhode Island. He came into a little bit of money. I'm guessing it was less than $20,000. With that money he purchased a small piece of land with electricity and water, a $600 trailer and a used car. The guy hired someone to tow the trailer next to his lot.

The gravel driveway is too steep to tow the trailer up is so he's had to hire a guy with some heavy equipment to move it for him. He's been busy trying to establish residency, get a mailing address, and all the normal things one does when moving into a new area.

There's been some difficulty as the town laws require a permanent structure on the land before they'll issue a house number. Without the house number he's been unable to transfer his driver's license from Rhode Island to New Hampshire.

The poor guy is a bit overwhelmed. As he put it: for the last five years he's had to make no decisions at all. He's out of practice. One night it got so bad he checked himself into the hospital with an anxiety attack.

It's not easy to get back in the “normal” world. Best I can tell, he got into his situation through a combination of bad luck, bad relationships, and bad decisions. I don't judge. Most people don't realize how easy it is to become homeless -or hard it can be to get back.

I did ask him how he planned on getting through the winter. On November 1st the homeless shelters back in Rhode Island open for the season. Rather than try to stay warm in his trailer he just might go spend the winter in the shelter.

-Sixbears

Disagreeing

I'm usually a pretty mellow guy. I'm willing to let a lot of stuff slide. One thing I learned from my mother was how to disagree without being disagreeable. Of course, she was a master at it and I'm only an amateur.

My mother had the ability to totally disagree with someone and in the end they felt pretty good about it. She'd smile and be polite and stick firmly to her ideas. She was so nice about it that often people would come around to her view. It really was quite something to watch.

Dad, on the other had, got to “no” a lot quicker, but he wasn't nasty about it either. Firm and unmovable, but no yelling and screaming. He was so honest about saying “no” that often people thought he was kidding.

I'm very likely to give someone a full hearing -then do whatever the heck I wanted to do anyway. That works for a lot of things, but one thing it does is make me unfit for most of the working world. I think that's more a reflection on the deficits of the working world than of my personality and attitude. While I've always had a certain amount of that attitude, it has only gotten worse with age. Now I'm nearly impossible.

One thing I have learned is to not treat the lovely wife that way. Better to engage in a little back and forth discussion as that's healthy for the relationship. I may be an ornery son of gun at times, but I do want to have a good relationship with the lovely wife. I make exceptions for those I love.

Authoritarian people and systems really get my goat. These days that's a dangerous attitude to have. Those in charge only want obedience. They love to make laws and rules. A few common sense rules in life only make sense, but that's not what I'm talking about. Those in charge want to bring back the days of the god/kings.

I might be smiling and nodding, but in my mind I'm thinking of ways to toss a monkey wrench into the system.

So . . . if you are someone in authority dealing daily with folks yelling, screaming and acting out, think of all those people with smiling faces . . . and unknowable thoughts. You know, those people you turned your back on because you thought it was safe to do so.

-Sixbears