Cracked Window

Assumptions are dangerous. That maxim was drilled into me years ago as a newbie journalist. But I’m not writing a news story. I’m speculating about a man at the school park up the street. He was sitting at a table, alone, surrounded by squealing kids and watchful parents. My son, Atticus, was playing nearby on the slide.

The guy looked wayward, homeless even, but orderly — lush gray beard, weathered face, stocking cap pulled to his brow, clean jeans, stuffed duffel bag, and a few items that I couldn’t make out next to the bag. On the table was a blue hard-cover notebook. Printed on the cover and spine was “Hewlett Packard.” The notebook made me think of the one I had at Intel for personnel documents.

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“Is your birthday really Friday?” I ask the wisp of a man leaning against the Post Office wall in Northeast Portland and panhandling for money. Thickets of wiry gray hair spill from beneath his maroon stocking hat. A beard partly hides sunken cheeks. His clothes are faded but clean.

It was our second encounter. I’d given him 30 cents a few minutes earlier as I left the building. He called out to me in a raspy voice that he needed money for his birthday. A clever line, I thought, more original than most I hear from street people. So I gave him my spare change. Call me uncaring, but I don’t usually give money to panhandlers for fear they’ll spend it on booze or drugs.

When I handed over the change, I was unintentionally brusque. Or I couldn’t hide my skepticism, I suppose, and strode off to my car a half-block away. Without thinking why, I walked back to the man and asked him my question, knowing we might share something in common—if he wasn’t lying. But to what end?

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