This is my first story - feel free to PM or comment if there's something I'm not doing right. I'm still new to this whole Redditing thing.
Maybe be me - 6'0'' male, weight approximately 165lbs, working as an actuarial analyst, no social skills, beta, wannabe do-gooder.
Hopefully don't be Homeless Ham (HH) - also 6'0'' male, weight approximately 300lbs, homeless.
A few weeks ago, I was driving home to my apartment and decided to stop by the local bridge to feed the homeless - I'd gotten into the habit of picking up a homeless person and taking them to a restaurant for Sunday lunch - ostensibly because I'm generous and want to help people, but actually because I have no social skills and this is how I go about trying to make friends.
I slowed down as I passed the bridge, and as luck would have it, there was a homeless guy standing on the bridge and holding a cardboard sign - Homeless Ham. I live out in the Midwest, so the weather here isn't exactly pleasant during the wintertime - and today was worse than usual. I turned my car into a side road, got out of the car and waved down HH to get in my car.
The first thing I noticed about HH was his weight, he seemed big from afar, but his planetary status became increasingly obvious as he got closer. I could almost feel his gravity pulling me in. As he got in my car, the frame of the car groaned underneath his enormous bulk.
Normally, when you ask a homeless guy what he wants to eat, he'll direct you to the nearest restaurant for a sandwich or something of the like. HH, however, would have none of that. He directed me to a Chinese restaurant about a half-mile away - a restaurant that he said he'd been to recently, and had enjoyed. My internal red flags started going off, but I let him get in and drove off anyways.
We drive up, get out and sit down at the Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has a buffet, so both HH and I get a plateful of food, and we sit down to chat. He talks about his relationships (and how much he valued integrity in his friends,) his job (or lack thereof, for the past five years,) and how I ought treat the homeless. The conversation continues for a few minutes, until he says,
"Man, you probably thought I was homeless, didn't you?"
Given that he had identified himself as such, I said yes - why else would someone be out by the bridge in the Des Moines ghetto holding a cardboard sign asking for food? He said he wasn't actually homeless. He seemed to be the joking type, so I didn't believe him - until he pulled out his keychain and jangled the keys in front of me. Lots of keys. He wasn't homeless after all...
He got up, dumped most of his plate of uneaten Chinese food and came back with another heaping plate of fried carbohydrates. In between bites of General Tso's chicken and fried rice, he starts telling me how I shouldn't trust the homeless, how everybody's "playin' you", how everybody's got their story. At this point, I was internally fuming, but still too beta to leave him.
He finished eating, dumped another mostly-uneaten plate of food in the trash and offered to cover the tip. I obliged him, and he laid down $2 - less than 10% of the total bill.
We left the restaurant and drove to his apartment - a hole in the ground, covered from wall to wall in loose papers and trash of various sorts - as well as a big-screen TV and a refrigerator fully stocked with food and alcohol of various sorts. There, he explained a bit more about himself - he was "retired" (living on disability pay) and didn't get out much, so thus he posed as a homeless man for food. He thanked me for my "generosity", and promised to repay the favor at some point in the future. I drove off fuming.
TL;DR: I try to help a homeless guy, homeless guy turns out to be a not-so-homeless ham.
Submitted February 08, 2015 at 06:07AM by iowastatsjunkie http://ift.tt/1KuqPma fatpeoplestories
No comments:
Post a Comment