The Least

Not everyone’s Christmas will be full of tinsel and mistletoe.

While many of us will put on five to ten pounds indulging in an overabundance of cookies, candies, and spiral cut hams; for others the day will be just another struggle to survive. Having nothing to fall back on they resort to panhandling; we walk past them all the time. Some certainly appear to be opportunists looking for an easy mark, but not all of them.

I handed a homeless man five dollars and a woman standing nearby scolded me for giving him the money because, as she said, “He’s just going to go to the liquor store and buy a drink.”

I replied, “What a coincidence, that’s exactly what I was going to do with the money, besides, if anyone could use a drink, I think its him.”

It doesn’t matter how he got into the position he’s in, the fact is that he’s there. It doesn’t make me a better person for being charitable, it merely serves to remind me what its like to be human.

Song: “What You Did” by Glenn Kaiser – From the album: “Cardboard Box”