Freaky Weird Stuff...

Some of the weird things you see when you're homeless... it truly is amazing.

Last Night... It's coming up on ten at night, we're in the courtyard outside the library and there are more than a few people there using the WiFi, watching YouTube or whatever. My friend Mike and Nick and Kyle (who is too lovable for his own good... he's like a big dumb dog that you just want to throw a frisbee with... and watch him catch it while riding his skateboard into parked cars...) Robert's there, Ricky's there... and three I had never seen before sitting at the tables in front of Tommie's.

So, one of those guys, he's wearing a beard, tall, not old, maybe early thirties. He gets up and starts asking everyone (except me as I'm sitting there chain smoking while I'm watching the latest episode of Dexter...) for a lighter. I didn't get up. I figured he'd get to me sooner or later, and I'd give him a light. I just was too engrossed in my show...

Well, nobody had one for him, and he never came to me, so I paid him no mind at all...

The guy sits back down, and Kyle skates off to the White Store (what everyone has always called Fast Mart on East Ave), and goes and buys one. I didn't know this, but that's what he did. He bought the guy a lighter, came back and gave it to this guy.

That was nice, sure. Except the guy didn't use it to light up a smoke.

Instead, he starts lighting up these little slips of paper right there by his table. There must have been ten of them, and he held them just long enough so they wouldn't burn his fingers.

I just watched, incredulous. I was also afraid, more than anything, that it was going to attract some kind of attention... like someone calls the police and those homeless amongst us get blamed (that's happened, by the way).

Later, it occurred to me how creepy weird that was. What could possibly be so private you have to make the effort to beg for a lighter to burn?

I suppose you can imagine the conspiracies that went through my head. Yeah, the guy was Arabic... no, don't go there...

And part of me wanted to talk to the Network Admin from the Library, who also works with the security system... I didn't... I told Kelly in the morning about it... but you know what? It probably something so very innocent...

I wish he hadn't burned the stuff in front of us, though...

It still strikes me as very strange, and I wasn't ever going to blog about it. Robert told me I should just do it because when you're homeless you really do see a lot of weird stuff...