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

[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"