take five

The other day I drove down to Peoria, IL for a client meeting. The meeting was to start at 2pm, I got to Peoria early and was parking my car outside of the office building by 1:30. As I was completing the parallel park, the phone rang, it was the man I was supposed to meet with. He said he had already left the office and was on his way to the hospital to see his wife who was having dizzy spells and all but fainted at work that day. I will not mention now why this gave me pause but he cancelled our meeting and all of a sudden I had driven two and a half hours for no particular reason. I decided to complete the park and walk around for a little while. It was a perfect day outside. I made a couple calls to notify a few foks of my predicament and decided I would find something to eat. As I was walking down the street I saw a seemingly homeless man asking a young guy about my age for a quarter. Of course I assumed the young man would make some excuse, as we do in Chicago, and keep walking. He did not, in fact he reached into his pocket, took out his wallet and said, "Here, I'll give you five." The homeless gentleman said "God Bless." and I had passed them and they were out of sight and earshot, but certainly not out of my mind.

Trying to suspend the assumption that people from Peoria are that naive about homeless people that they would give a guy five dollars and think it's going to turn his life around or he is going to buy a loaf of bread for his kids or something. Of course, I have given my share of dollars to the homeless but time and life in the city has made me realize that money, either in the form of a dollar passed from one human to another, much less millions passing from our citizens to the government and then to the less fortunate means nothing unless there is accountability and a desire for self sufficiency.

Maybe the Peorian was just having a great day, maybe he made off big at the casino that day, maybe he had enough money to go around and could have paid for my lunch, who knows, I am taking this whole scene out of context but you will find in future posts, the smallest things have a tendency to set me off and impose a single occurence on the meaning of life or the order of things, and most excitingly, the disorder of things.