I was heading into my favourite pizza shop on a cold Friday night when a 30s-something man approached me and asked me for some money so he could eat.
I checked my pockets and said I was sorry but I had no change. Even as I said it, I knew that I had paper money in my wallet. I wonder why I thought he wouldn’t have wanted some of that.
“That’s OK,” he said. “You have a good night.”
Why are the ones you turn down so darned polite? I went into the restaurant and ordered my usual. A medium pepperoni for 5.99, complete with a can of pop. A good deal.
I launch into the slices as soon as they come out of the oven and usually burn the inside of my mouth as a result. Burning the roof of your mouth is about as bad as it gets, next maybe to banging the funny bone in your elbow or stubbing your little toe.
I eat exactly half of the pizza and take the rest home for snacks later and even the next day.
But on this night, I sat with heavy heart and burned tongue, and thought about the man looking for money for supper. I know people would say if he wants to eat he should get a job and stop begging, but on the other hand, how bad must things be for a person when asking strangers for handouts has become an option?
I resolved to go find him and give him the other half of my pizza.
I picked up the box and went out into the night but he had disappeared, as had my chance to maybe do a bit of good.
My family and I were in Ireland this summer and in downtown Dublin, a young woman with two children in a pram came up to me and asked me for some money. Her babies hadn’t eaten all day, she said.
I looked at them and asked their names. Michael and Mary. Good Irish names. They gazed up at me. Two little angels in a buggy. I hesitated but then gave her 20 Euros.
When I got back to Canada, I read about the scams on the streets of Dublin, people shaking down ignorant tourists for money. But it didn’t bother me.
First of all, I will never know for sure if those children hadn’t eaten all day (or if their names were even Michael and Mary). And secondly, I would rather be tender-hearted and a fool than hard-hearted and dead inside.
I have never begged on the street but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been the beneficiary of the goodwill of charitable people. Many, many times over what I gave that woman.
That fellow outside the pizza shop wasn’t skin and bones, didn’t look like he was starving. I hope he wasn’t.
We are all in this together.
©2013 Jim Hagarty
