John Hendow

Last Saturday night I played a very satisfying gig in Seattle, at a club on Capital Hill. Late at night it can be a little sketchy in that area and I try to be aware of my surroundings when leaving. After the gig, at about 2:30 AM, I was loading the last of my gear into the car. I had just closed the trunk and noticed a black man about my age approached me on the dark street. He was alone, wearing a dirty coat and smelled like he’d been wearing the same clothes for a few days. I sized him up immediately to assess his threat level, noting whether he seemed left or right handed (in case I had to defend myself) and whether he seemed to have anything in his hands.

He asked me if he could ask a question (which always amuses me because it’s circular to ask permission to ask a question). I told him yes. He pointed vaguely up the street and said his family was up there in a car trying to sleep and he wanted to know if I could help him. It was really cold out and he was looking for a place where they could sleep for the night. He showed me a printed list of shelters / churches where they had tried to get in, but all the free ones were full and he didn’t have any money since he was out of work until Monday. What he wanted was a couple of bucks toward the nine-dollar cost of staying at the YMCA. I thought about it for less than three seconds and fished out a ten dollar bill for him. The guy immediately started to weep. He hugged me, telling me his name and saying he’d never forget my kindness, and that he’d pass it on to someone else as soon as he was working again. Then he walked away and that was the last I saw of him.

So either I got taken by some con artist with a great line. Or I helped some guy who just needed a hand. It doesn’t matter because if he was lying to me it’s on him. Either way I’m OK with it. If nothing else, got a hug for $10, which isn’t bad.

If there’s a point (and most of the time in life there ISN’T a point), it’s only that it would have been really easy to ignore that guy. It definitely constituted a risk to interact with a stranger on a dark street late at night, and I don’t recommend it to everyone. But how many people around us just want to be treated as human and are denied? The homeless, elderly, handicapped, disaffected, depressed, alone, etc etc. Those are people who really NEED to have their humanity celebrated and recognized. But most of us are socially trained to ignore that segment and to just walk on by. And in doing so we rob those people of their humanity, and eventually they don’t recognize themselves as human, which is when antisocial behavior begins… it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy… those people become less functionally human and we take even further steps to avoid interacting with them.

In a less extreme case, we might just put up our shields and ignore some guy playing the violin in a subway. I don’t know. That guy on the street said he’d never forget my kindness, and I hope I never forget that he took a risk by asking for help. I guess we both got something out of the deal.