Reid lies like crumpled human garbage beneath a tarp on the edge of the parking lot, 25 feet away. It’s 2am on a Saturday morning. He could easily pass as a landscaping boulder, or a hobbit cowering beneath an elvish cloak before the gates of Mordor.
I try not to park too close, because he’s an attention magnet, and he sometimes needs help I can’t give. It took four of us, his well-intentioned and incompetent brethren, to get him back into his wheelchair yesterday morning. It was like something out of Cannery Row because we were all bumbling and worried about injuring him. Reid is 84 years old and frail. He’s been homeless for two years, on the street since his girlfriend stole his car a month ago. He’s also legless.
What can I do for him? Nothing meaningful — who am I? I could get him a warmer blanket somewhere, sure. I could feed him and make some phone calls for him. Anybody have the number for the Fairy Godmother Department? Because this fix is going to take a magic wand.
Reid’s plight leaves me numb. Not unfeeling, but stunned. Because we’re the same, really. I’m unemployed, overweight, live in my car and have trouble breathing and walking. I look younger than my 60 years, manage to stay halfway clean and have good language skills, so people think there’s still hope for me, which I tend to doubt. If I had access to that magic wand, I’d damned well give myself a little makeover before I ever got around to Reid. While there’s still time. If there is.
There’s so little left of him, yet that little is still subject to the same harsh realities and restrictions (Prescott City Ordinance 2024-1862) as all we local homeless. I don’t know his story. Didn’t ask, and don’t much care. I might not even like him if I really knew him, but unless he’s the reanimated mortal remains of Josef Mengele, what could he have done to deserve being cut in half and dumped by the side of the road? There’s detritus on the ground around him, a couple of empty beer cans, a pack of cigarettes, water bottles and such. It’s horrifying how well he blends in.
Reid’s plight leaves me numb, possibly because I know that how I feel toward him is how others feel toward me. Sympathetic, but helpless to make any significant change in his life. At least partly accusatory — how did he end up like this? Mistrustful, because if I show compassion, how much will he try to take me for? Mildly repelled by his infirmity and the filth he sleeps in. The shelters, he says, can’t accommodate him due to his special needs and liability concerns. How does he stay clean and go to the restroom? Above all, I’m happy that I’m not him.
Except I am. Or will be soon enough, barring a nod from the Fairy Godmother Department, and assuming I let it go that far. I’d forgotten that people could live so long. The way I’m headed, though, that shouldn’t be a real issue.
If Reid gets a little joy from a can of beer, good on him, I say. He eats regularly and his mind seems passably sharp — he can string sentences together as well as your average presidential candidate. He’s a bit hard of hearing. He’s better humored than I am most of the time. No one can endure life like this forever, though. He and I agree on that. Like us all, he’s learned the limits of social assistance, and knows that rescue is not coming. Some days you don’t know why you bother to go on. Most days, in my case. I can’t imagine he can last long, sleeping on the hard, cold ground with winter on the way.
So while he and I are the same, I might still have the advantage of time and durability, a remote chance to salvage something out of this mess I wake up to every day. I have all my bits, abused and deconditioned though they indubitably are. I’m not given to optimistic fantasy, and the ol’ Can-Do spirit generally makes me want to retch. But hell, 60 is the new 50, and it’s never too late to give up hope.
Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and it will never be answered. Thank you for calling the Fairy Godmother Department.
