Hundred Hand

A beggar made an insteresting speech on the subway this morning on my way to work. He was well spoken and clean-cut, at least for a beggar, and explained his finances to us. Apparently, it costs him $32 dollars a night to stay at a YMCA in the city, and if he doesn’t have his money ready in the morning then the room is up for grabs, for which there is a lot of competition. The halirious part however, was that he tried to invoke our patriotism by saying the person that gets his room may not even be in this country legally.

I thought about this a little. The whole purpose behind the immigration process is to make sure that those who come to our country can support themselves, and won’t be a burden on others. For example, you wouldn’t let someone in the country if their only skill was begging on the subway.

He went on further by talking about his life philosophy. He said he doesn’t steal, doesn’t do drugs, because he lives his life by accountability. He even offered to let us take on his philosophy if we chose. I just don’t see this happening; that the people in suits heading to work at Rockafeller Center are going to decide that maybe they have lived their life all wrong, and they should be more like the guy asking for 32 bucks.

It was all cool though, he got some money from a Hasidic Jew, thanked him for the mitzvah (I just learned what this means), then spouted a few jumbled Bible verses and hopped off at the next stop.

And because it’s against my policy to give money to beggars I didn’t give him anything. However, I have to figure out what my policy is on people selling blog post ideas.