[HeavyMetal BankFisherman]

So I wake up at 3:00 am. Can't go back to sleep. Decide I am hungry for choclate ice cream. They have Haagen Daaz at Plaid pantry. Got the car parked out on the city street but decide to walk the five blocks to Plaid Pantry. I walk down twelfth to Jefferson. I notice a few people milling around. There are typically a number of vagrants roaming the streets in this area.

As I turn the corner onto Jefferson there is a gauntlet of vagrants hanging out. Immediately I hear the "Can you help me out?" routine. I walk past the crowd with fists clenched, chest up, and a serious look on my face. I am dressed entirely in black with a leather trench coat style jacket. These people know I have money and they want some of it. Nobody challenges me, although I hear "Come on man help me out" as I walk past.

I turn to go into the Plaid Pantry and there are five or six individuals hanging out in front of the door. They back off and give me space to enter the store. As I walk into the store I make eye contact with a young girl approximately nineteen years of age. She is accompanied by another older woman and several males in thier early twenties. All of them have several pounds of metal hanging from thier face. For that brief second that eye contact was made, I saw a very lost soul.

While I am in the store I can not help but think of this poor young girl and how she has ended up in the situation she is in.

As I walk out of the store the same young girl asks me for .39 cents. I reach into my coat pocket and give her all the change I have. Around two dollars. As I dropped the change into the girls hand, she grabbed a couple of my fingers and looked up at me. It was obvious that she desperately wanted me to take her with me. One can only imagine the suffering she has been through. I instinctively pulled my hand away and walked on.

Once I got back to my apartment I could not stop thinking about that poor young girl. I was wondering if her parents knew where she was. What will she become? I wish I could have helped her.

When one has the whole world at thier finger tips. They sometimes fail to see the suffering just a few blocks away.

 

[HeavyMetal BankFisherman]

Sound like a scammer looking for a mark.

That is very possible. But I know what I saw in this girls eye's was fear and a cry for help. I am not a mark and have heard every story you can imagine over the years. But there was no story in this case. It was all in the eyes.

I have lived downtown for almost twenty years. I have seen it all. Most of the permanent beggars have stopped asking me for change because I give them none. This girl did not belong. She was likely new to the streets due to drugs.

Now that I am older I put a higher value on youth. And I know that one day, that young girl is going to regret wasting her life.

I am still troubled by the encounter. But there was nothing I could really do other than give her the change she asked for. And in most cases I would not have even done that.

 

[HeavyMetal BankFisherman]

It is very sad especially when a guy sees a girl in trouble and you want to help, but how? If it was a guy(in trouble ) you have more moves available. As it is you can't even give her your phone number with out asking for trouble.

Exactly.

I spent almost a year on the streets when I was a teenager. I know what it is all about. I wised up and went back to mommy's arms. Hopefully this girl will do the same.