A City View - Scary People

A City View - Scary People

Do one thing every day that scares you. —Eleanor Roosevelt

I’LL BE HONEST with you. My first day volunteering at The Bridge, I was happy to be assigned to the salad bowl. Standing on the other side of the serving line put me at a safe distance from my new “customers” (and within a few feet of the back door if an incident broke out). But within thirty minutes I regretted getting this assignment; I wanted to be out front where the action was. As they greeted those of us who were filling their trays and thanked us for volunteering, my homeless customers began to look downright neighborly. These folks, despite some negative press in the local paper, weren’t scary; they were just hungry.

You see, I know about scary now that I live in a high-rise.

Scary was the woman who was in the elevator with Steve and me one Friday. Yelling profanity into her phone, the late-twentysomething, model-like beauty scared the fool out of me. It appeared from the one-sided version of the conversation (which I had no choice but to overhear) that her roommate had “borrowed” a pair of her shoes, broken one heel, and then returned the shoes to her closet. Can you believe it?

Don’t mess with a young woman whose designer shoes have been damaged. The gal was beside herself—and like many of the beautiful ladies who live here, she was angry. Steve made the observation early on that many of the women in our building seemed to live in a constant state of aggravation. Which made me wonder—with their nearly six-figure incomes, trendy clothes, and high-rise living, are their lives really all that bad? Or is it the absence of real hardship that causes them to live in a state of disillusionment? Maybe if they realized their purpose was something greater than landing a date for Saturday night, they would be more content.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (Philippians 4:8)

When you consider that the “they” I’m writing about might be “us,” it’s downright frightening. Scary people aren’t the homeless people at The Bridge; scary people are those of us who get all stewed up over a whole lot of nothing.