I'm not just curse words

On my way to hang out with some friends the other night I was confronted by a grizzly looking African American. He was in his mid fifties and immediately my "homeless beggar" alarm was going off.

He tells me that I'm just the sort of guy that he's been looking for. I think he called me a nice young man. He was obviously trying to get into my good graces.

He explained to me that he was diabetic, and had been off of his insulin for 4 days. He said that he had recently made a decision to change his life, and had been living in a shelter. But that the shelter only lets you stay there for 6 days, then they kick you out.

At this point I felt that he was telling me the truth, but I didn't feel obligated to give him anything. I told him that I maybe had a dollar that I could spare.

I'm reaching for my dollar, when he just breaks down and starts crying. He said that he was a peace officer for 35 years, and very recently he broke his leg and was let go. He said that for the past 6 nights he had been sleeping under neath a bridge with some other transients, who he was terrified of. He was scared of them, for several reasons, but the worst reason of all is that they had been stealing his syringes and insulin shots. He told me that his mom lived in a small town about two hours away, and that a bus pass to there was $16.50. He was crying this whole time, and I saw a look of fear in his eyes, that will forever be unparalleled.

While he's telling me this, I'm opening my wallet. I'm staring at a $20 bill that could possibly save this man's life, and a one dollar bill that I'm going to give him. I've had some personal issues with diabetes and understand how dangerous it can be to be away from your insulin. Especially if you have type I diabetes, and especially if you're black.

And I don't exactly know how I knew that this guy wasn't the average bum, but he wasn't. He was a person in need. And I was a person that could help him. I've been a person in need before, and while I couldn't empathize with his situation, I could sympathize with his shame.

So I gave him the twenty, and told him to go see his mom. And at that point I was done with it. Twenty dollars is really nothing in the grand scheme of things. I was moving on with my day. And moving past this man, who I hoped was on his way to the bus station. When he tapped me on my shoulder.

As I turned around he was still in tears. He said that over the past week, he had completely lost his faith in people. He said that he had been thinking to himself that there wasn't any decent black people left, and he definitely didn't think that there were any decent white people left out there. And this big 6'4" 200 something pound man wrapped his arms around me and we had ourselves a good cry. And as I'm standing there in this strangers arms sobbing, I realize that I myself had lost some faith in humanity. I as well have been struggling to find decent people in this world.

I hope he made it, to where ever he needed to. Or that if he did not make it, that at least he has a little more faith in humanity than when I first met him. It was the best twenty dollars I never spent.