A Day in the Life

Yesterday was a day much like any other...if you live in a hell dimension.

The very first thing in the morning, I opened the door and saw THIS sight:

Yeah, that's a human body laying curled up on my stoop, wrapped up in a hoodie. Sorry about the calcium build-up on the screen so you can't see so well. I'll get around to scrubbing that off when I get a new batch of energy. I've got one ordered, it just hasn't arrived yet.

Anyway...I stood there to see if the body was breathing, and it was. So I spoke gently and woke the fella up and the body turned out to be an 18 year old runaway boy, now homeless.

I talked to him for quite a while; asking things like what was his drug of choice, was he hungover, and could I expect to see his face on the back of a milk carton? I also asked him if he was hungry and he said he was.

I fed him a couple plates of eggs (he ate all that I had on hand) and a chicken salad sandwich with some juice.

And I asked him if he'd like me to call his mom or someone else in his family. He said, yeah, he'd like that. So he gave me the number and I dialed it and left a message on an answering machine.

He's been on the street for more than 8 months so I would imagine someone out there is frantic for news of him.

Come to think of it, maybe not. I've had some experience with families leaving members to die in a ditch. I just hope that's not the case with his. He was a nice young man, lost, scared, and with no way out of his predicament without a serious helping hand.

I asked him where he'd be in case someone called back and he told me and then he left.

It was later in the day and many phone calls later that it dawned on me! I hadn't left a call-back number! I am so lazy and so used to caller ID that it never occurred to me that not everyone has that feature!

Now I am haunted by the vision of some poor people down in San Francisco having heard word that their son/brother/nephew is alive and homeless on the streets of Sacramento but with no way to find him or learn more! Arrggh!

Just to show that no good deed goes unpunished, I had to resort to buying a blender because none were available for cheap at the Salvation Army. Mine had met with an unfortunate spoon-in-the-blades accident earlier this week and had to be tossed out. I was really sweating the expenditure on a budget that has no room for such luxuries, but I went ahead and bought a cheap one at Walmart.

And when I got home I noticed a letter in the mailbox from my landlord stating that my rent had just increased by $100 a month.

I'm sure there's a bible verse to cover this second big event of the day: something about adversity and heaping coals upon my head and probably even boils, pestilence and locusts. What it could be doesn't come to mind, but I am for certain sure I know which one covers the first incident:

Matthew 25:35-40