KINDERGARTEN

Homelessness for Stupid People

The foibles of the most pampered homeless population in the Bay Area...

How much trouble can I get into over a blog? Heh... a LOT! Yes folks, you'd be pleasantly surprised at how much the homeless community in Livermore resembles the worst drama (or is it the best drama?) you've ever heard of.

DRAMA: 1, composition in verse or prose intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions through action and dialogue and typically designed for theatrical performance.

The question is, are we dealing with verse or prose? Seriously! If you took the example of a certain lady who lost it with me last Monday you'd have to say verse... the ear splitting rant I enjoyed was sheer poetry... it was a thing of utter beauty delivered with boisterous style. I truly envy people who can do so with such aplomb.

Being self assured is a quality a lot of homeless share. My friend Lynn observed that a lot of them always seem to have an angle. Some scheme that's magically going to get them out of being homeless. They also tend to be very sure they're victims of circumstance rather than their own bad choices. It is true there genuinely are people who are homeless because of circumstance, they're the exception, rather than the rule. For my part, I'm the rule, rather than the exception.

I remember Nancy once lamenting that the services delivered by the Christians here in Livermore caters mostly to broken people. At the time I was listening rather than thinking about it, but it did stick with me. I remember agreeing with her at the time, but not quite sure why. I was still “young” in my homelessness and uneducated as to many of the realities. What I failed to understand, and I think Nancy probably still does is this: it's not about being broken, it's about immaturity. Eventually reality has made it's way into my consciousness and I am adjusting to it... slowly...

One of those realities is this: a lot of us were not properly educated by those who raised us (or failed to raise us). Again, I'm no exception. Here I am, darn near fifty and I'm trying to learn things I should have learned before entering Kindergarten! Any gathering of the homeless you'll find looks a lot like unsupervised five year old children.

When you become homeless, there's a great deal of fear. You're entering a world in which the rules are murky and confusing. If you're already unclear as to social rules of your local culture, as most of the homeless are, it's even worse. It's no accident that there are a lot of what you would call “non-conformists” amongst the homeless. If I were to guess, and this is by no means a declaration, I'd speculate that a lot of the non-conformists rejected social rules because those rules were never properly explained to them, if they were ever explained at all.

My friend Kenny was just run out of his camp site by authorities. Kenny is not the type of problem homeless guy who attracts negative attention. I've mentioned him before as a man I respect. Kenny's mistake was sticking around as the problem types moved in, began to create a mess, effectively raising a banner that said “Homeless are Here, and we're making as big a mess as possible, come deal with it!” It happens every time a colony forms, and Livermorons do not take kindly to it with good reason. It's one of the rules, and a very important one. Don't like it? Go live in the National Forest or on some BLM land...

It does present another problem for the homeless, however. If being alone is a better idea than the protection offered by a colony, how do you protect yourself when you bed down at night? The answer is: hide! Be mobile, don't have a fixed camp site, and never, ever, leave evidence you've been there when you leave. The most successful homeless people, the ones who have the least problems, live by this model.

The homeless are a talkative lot. Do we know when to shut up? No, most of us don't. As most of you reading this have learned, saying too much makes for a great deal of drama...

Ooo... there's that word again: Drama!

So, is Drama a product of immaturity?

My experience tells me it is... but then there are those of us who feed on it... The News Media would not exist without it. Life would be rather boring if there were none of it, and nobody would own a television... And this blog would certainly never have been started if we were all mature adults who dealt with things logically. A certain level of drama is essential to make life worth living. People devoid of drama are boring people.

The trick is to learn where the norm is, and how to stick to the norm. This may seem a trivial thing, but when one becomes overly dramatic it attracts attention. When one becomes overly dramatic too often... remember the tale of the Boy Who Cried “Wolf?” (Judy, you listening?)

Always remember this, my friends: when you are dealing with a homeless person on any level, you are most likely dealing with someone who has not yet grown up.