‘Tis the Season of the Parallel Parked Panhandler

Listen to Jim: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/tistheseasonoftheparallelparked.mp3

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I’m manuevering between faded parallel stripes, sliding into a familiar parking place at Five Points South, but there’s something already parked there.

It’s nighttime, and the lump of clothing isn’t covered in reflective tape, so it would be easy to run over it before the thinking process kicks in.

I pause just short of filling the entire space, to see what’s what.

Lying full-length in the parking space is a man of darkness—dark clothing, dark beard, dark skin, dark asphalt, darkened night. He’s conscious. I know that because he’s leisurely smoking a cigarette, gazing up at the sky, head propped upon belongings, oblivious to the rhythms of the city surrounding him.

The uninitiated driver (me) might panic, might call 911 to report a vagrant, might call the cops to alert them to the possibility that this man is subject to being run over, might call the Jimmy Hale Mission (but what would they do?), might walk over and make a donation to the causeless cause, might pull back and park elsewhere (thus leaving the man once again vulnerable to the urban nighttime), might mind his own business and get on with his errand.

I can attempt to justify a dozen different actions, but most of them seem judgmental, most of them would entail behaving with incomplete data.

Does this man report me for almost running over him? Does he give me a lecture about invading his space? Does he ask anything of me, save his silent plea to leave him alone? Is he better off in his small universe than I am in mine? Am I the true vagrant—feasting off the images of people different from myself in order to write a story such as this?

Can’t stop my brain.

The better part of valor is to remember him kindly, appreciate what I have in my life, hope that he’s happier living without my imposed opinions, hope that he finishes his satisfying smoke, picks up his portable life, and saunters off to the next shelter—and finds some warmth and quiet within this nervous and nosy metropolis

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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