Sigh.
It takes a lot to get me angry these days. Maybe it’s a function of age and passions have cooled, or maybe I don’t have as much to get angry at these days. Sure there are things that frustrate me, all around me and I get frustrated on a daily basis. But anger doesn’t manifest itself in my life anymore. At least I didn’t think it did.
I was driving around getting various chores done early on a Saturday morning. I pulled up at a turn signal at a large intersection and as happens more often than not there was a panhandler there.
He looked thoroughly beat up by life. Dark tanned skin, ratty and dirty clothes, and nothing than skin and bones. Most public officials frown on people helping out panhandlers but I will pass out a few dollars every once in a while and I suppose I will continue to do it in the future.
But just before I hand my money over he stops me and pulls out a printed sign. He asks me if I was a christian and just then I read the sign that’s filled with a litany of hateful anti-homosexual messages. The sign looks like it was printed on a computer and the paper was laminated so it could survive out on the streets. I think to myself “You’ve got to be kidding me”.
He starts up on some rehearsed speech denouncing same-sex marriage. I stop him in mid-stride and tell him “I am not going to listen to this. We are not going there.” He walks off down the median and mumbles something that sounded like “Have a nice life, homosexual lover”. Of course he didn’t say homosexual.
I think about getting out and saying or doing something regretful but the light turns green and I drive off instead. I have to control my foot to not floor the pedal.
I am incensed.
It’s a naked, mindless bigotry that I have not witnessed in a long time. It’s not the veiled or hidden prejudice that you see in popular media or hinted at by people you may casually know. It was this stupid, in your face, and even prideful hatred that I thought no longer existed except in some of the most backward of places in the middle of nowhere.
I am flabbergasted for the longest time. Just mulling it over and over in my head. It’s like I can’t believe I just had this encounter.
What makes it worse is that this is a guy that most likely has had to live with the sting of prejudice against homeless people. People have probably made negative judgments about his character without knowing anything about him and here he is doing the same thing. I want to find this guy and ask him what made him turn into this hateful person? Was it his family, a teacher, some friends that warped his perspective and made him the way he was now?
I am left angry by the encounter. Angry that this still exists, angry that people can still fall prey to such notions. Angry that I can’t really do that much to change the situation.
I wish I could end this post on a happy note but there is really nothing happy about the episode. This is just sad.
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