Nasty Lady

[ailbhe]

As we went into the supermarket today we passed a man sitting on a cardboard box on the ice, looking cold and dirty, with a blanket over his knees, begging. I got the kids into the warm and said "The first thing we do is we give that man some money." A woman popped up behind me and said "You shouldn't, he's smoking, if he can afford to smoke -"

I don't know what else she said because I got angry. I babbled something about knowing what it's like out there, and that people DIE of being poor and homeless. She went away. I gave the man some money. He was pathetically grateful.

And every time I saw her as we went around the shop I was a little bit frightened.

Who can look at a homeless person in this weather and not have the slightest bit of compassion? Who?

Comments

[clarahippy.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Whenever people complain that homeless folk buy booze/fags/drugs/whatever I always point out that if I lived on the street I would want to blunt that fact out as much as possible too!

Ailbhe, thank you for teaching your children some compassion. Even as a grown woman it makes me sad when my parents criticise me for giving (my own!) money to homeless people.

[ailbhe]

I did fantasise about going around the shop behind her and criticising the morality and health value of everything she bought.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

Samuel Johnson too:

What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."
-- Piozzi, "Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson"

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

Damn straight. The guy is sat on his arse in the snow begging for money and we're pissed off because he's not making healthy choices? Right, I see, he should be putting his energies into kicking the fags. That'll improve his life no end, I'm sure.

[ailbhe]

I did fantasise about going around the shop behind her and criticising the morality and health value of everything she bought.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

I just... I boggle when I run across the mindset that someone on the street is clearly a lazy bastard taking the cushy option. It's kind of frightening, the degree to which people universalise their own experience. Like, I've always kept a roof over my head and money coming in and food on the table, so clearly everyone else can do the same.

Sure (to take my own example), I had a fantastic, secure, middle-class upbringing, and never knew what it was to go hungry, and my parents and grandparents between them more or less paid for my university education, and my family and friends all rallied round me and supported me through my mental illness until I was able to function again, and now I have a wonderful husband earning over £30K and he helps pay the rent on our (rather lovely) house and so I've been able to save enough of my salary to keep me going in a real emergency... but apart from that, it's not like anything was handed to me on a plate. Right? Right?

[ailbhe]

Hee, yeah. It's like admitting sometimes working hard isn't enough == negating all the hard work people who *are* well-off have done.