I’m Not Rubbishing Anyone Actually.

People who pick up litter or people who beg in the street all have their reasons for how and who they are and this may or may not concern us.

This morning the man and the boys and I went to Gate Pa for a watch battery (I’d already bought one but they’d conveniently forgotten the watch needs two). We parked almost right in front of the shop and to the side a young man was sitting with a cardboard sign. The boys went on ahead as I spared him a smile. No-one, I think, deserves to be consigned to invisibility due to their circumstances. Remember to smile at people in wheelchairs as well people — do you think they don’t wish they didn’t have to look up to all of us!

At any rate, I’d almost caught up with the others when I registered “Miss, Miss! Dena!” and I realised I hadn’t really looked at the boy on the pavement. He was a former client and he stood to give me a hug. I hugged him back noticing he looked a lot healthier and more lucid than the last time we’d met. I asked him how he was and he told me things weren’t so good right now. He said “We had a baby you know.” I did and I asked how baby was. He told me baby was with the mother and she was living with her mother and he couldn’t live there so he’d decided to be the homeless one to help out.

He spoke of seeing them earlier that morning and told me it was hard to have burned so many bridges. I reminded him that his first job needed to be to rebuild some of them and he happily agreed. Then he said, “I guess you know what I’m going to ask next?” And I said, “I guess you know what I’m going to answer?” We both had a laugh at that and I reminded him that I would always provide advice, encouragement and a belief in his potential, all of which were free. I told him I’d left the Ministry, which surprised him, and that I was working on a youth arts project for now, which didn’t.

I left him with well wishes and my regards to his partner and a hug for baby. He gave me a smile and a wave as I went back past with…