Adventures in Homelessness.

LOS ANGELES-  Every week as I head to the airport the routine lately has been to swing by McDonald’s. I’m not a fan of anything on their menu, but I can’t shake this craving for two egg & cheese McMuffins, w/no meat & bottled water.

So, It’s 4:30 a.m. and I’m sitting in a McDonald’s drive-thru when suddenly THIS guy walks up.

My face froze as I tried to come up with a new “sorry I don’t have $2 to spare” lie.  Homeless guy reads my faces and instantly growls… “Man I don’t need you to pay for it!! I just need you to order the shit. I got the money !!”

Like a rapper showing off an $80,000 watch, he proudly pulls out a fist full of loose change and proceeds to count out $2 to give to me.

      I told him keep his money and I ordered the food. They said there was a wait on the eggs so the McDonald’s employee asked me to pull up into a parking space.

This is where the fun began.

     Before I could even get into the parking space the homeless guy walks up to the car and starts asking me if he could use my phone. 

Huh?

 “I need to call my Niece.” He said

 “at 4:30 in the morning?” I asked.

    I figured no one would believe me if told them that a homeless guy asked to use my cell phone so I videoed the entire 60-second conversation.

Not the greatest video quality but if you crank up the volume you can make out our conversation just fine.

 I started to have some fun with him on camera but I didn’t know how long I’d be waiting on my food so I didn’t want to piss him off. I wanted to ask him poignant questions such as… “is your niece a freak?”  or  “Do you have a Myspace page?” But I was afraid that Jesus would see the surveillance tape and punish me.

SEATTLE-  So I’m in Seattle a few weeks ago checking out of my hotel. It’s early like 5-6am or something. I’m headed out to the rental car with my luggage and a homeless lady approached me in the parking lot with a simple request…

      “Sir, I’m not trying to hassle you for any money but I know the hotel has a free breakfast in there. Do you think you could bring me back  2 muffins and 2 cups of coffee?” she said.

Conventional wisdom leads most of us to deny homeless people whatever it is they ask for simply because they’re homeless.

But she wasn’t asking for money, she was simply asking me to run an errand. So on my way back to the car with my second load of luggage I grabbed her 2 muffins and some coffee.

Minutes later I’m loading my luggage into the car and in the distance I hear…

 “BITCH !!    I DON’T EAT NO BLUEBERRIES !!!”

I turn my head just in time to see a second homeless dude launch the free muffin at the chick’s head. She tried to duck down but it was too late.

Have you ever seen a baseball player get hit by a pitch?

It was just like that.  But instead of a shards of a shattered batting helmet, it was an explosion of Otis Spunkmeyer crumbs and napkins that erupted against her temple. Coffee spilled all over the place.

 Witnessing a woman get hit in the head with a blueberry muffin evokes a lot of different emotions.

  On one hand, I just witnessed an act of domestic violence. Yeah it was only a muffin but who’s to say that this dude doesn’t hit on this woman all the time?

 OR

I can laugh at a starving homeless man still being picky about his choice of muffin.

 OR

 I can choose to not feel sorry for this woman on the grounds that she’s has been walking the streets with this man for lord knows how many years and she STILL doesn’t know what kind of muffin he likes.

 Of the women I’ve dated seriously in my life it’s taken none of them less than a week to figure out that I love lasagna, I hate onions, and I like my eggs scrambled light.

Pastry or Projectile?

Do they like white or wheat toast?  Does he like his steak medium or well done?  Coca-Cola or Pepsi?  Crown & Coke or Vodka & Cranberry?

There's women I haven't spoken to in YEARS and still know that they're allergic to peanuts and like extra pickles on their whopper.

   Any decent girlfriend should be able to answer these questions  about her man's food preferences after 4-6 months.

So you're telling me that you walk the streets with this man 24-7 and you don’t know he hates blueberries? Maybe she should have had a muffin thrown at her.

 My brain wrestled with all of these scenarios at the same time.

 This isn’t even counting the sidebar thoughts that I was having about how in the hell does a homeless man pull a girlfriend. And THEN disrespect her and she STILL stays with you?  Now THAT’S pimping.

The only thing that could’ve made this event funnier was for him to say….

 ‘BITCH !!!  I DON’T EAT NO BLUEBERRIES!  YOU KNOW I LIKE BANANA NUT BREAD!’

By the time my Price is Right wheel of Emotions stopped spinning, it landed on ‘HILARIOUS’

 Which sucked because right around the same time I cracked a visible smile I made eye contact with Jill J McBlueBerry Crumbs. Her eyes welled with disappointment in the fact that her man was mad at her.

Doubled with the embarrassment of knowing that I saw the whole thing.

 I already felt bad for laughing. Now I felt twice as bad for getting caught. 

 We’ve all seen couples fighting and as a man you stand there torn between breaking up the fight or minding your own business. So much I wanted to say to this woman. So badly I wanted to tell this woman that she doesn’t have to accept abuse.

 “Walk Away from Him” I wanted to scream out.

  So badly I wanted to tell her to call the cops in hopes that he’d get arrested.  I wanted to tell her that physical & verbal abuse are the tools of a weak man who has to scare a woman into staying with him.

 I wanted to say all of this to that woman but the only thing that could come out my mouth was..

”HEY I THINK THEY HAVE SOME APPLE CINNAMON MUFFINS IN THERE. I CAN GO CHECK IF YOU LIKE.”

 “FUCK YOU NIGGA!”, She replied.

 I took that as a no. And proceeded to drive off.

 Neither of them have Myspace pages, I asked.

 Wood, Jr.

P.S. I blame rap music. Men, using pastries as weapons against women is nothing new.  Wasn’t it Trick Daddy in the 90’s who told us that he… “Hit Dat Bitch wit a Honey Bun.”   I don’t remember the song but I do remember that ad lib.