"You know how I feel about the homeless. They're human beings. And they have no homes."

Quick story about our Saturday.

Claire and I were going to go out and run some errands on Saturday. It was about noon when we left the house to go to Claire's car. In our building, we actually park underneath the apartments, so we have to leave the building, walk around the front, and go behind/on the side to get to the car port. There's a bunch of "garages" down there, and each section has 2 cars per unit. Claire's car is always parked on the right side of the unit we're in.

I was about to get in the passenger side of the car when I had the following thoughts in order:

"Great...someone left a pile of crap next to Claire's car."

"It looks like there's a pair of shoes in that crap."

"Shit...that's a person next to the car!"

That's right folks...there was a homeless person sleeping next to Claire's car in our garage, right between the car and the wall. Here's a shoddy picture of the scene (the homeless man was wearing red Converse shoes):


I didn't know what to do, and I obviously didn't want to wake this guy up because he might be crazy. This is the exchange between Claire and myself. Keep in mind that it was all spoken in that kind of "loud-whisper" that people do when something is important but they have to be quiet:

"Claire, don't get in the car. I'll back it out and then you can get in."
"Why?"
"There's a guy next to the car. I think he's sleeping."
"What?"
"THERE"S A HOMELESS DUDE RIGHT HERE!"
"No way!"

We retreated from the garage and had a meeting about what we should do about the guy. We were just going to take my car that was parked out on the street, but we didn't want to have some homeless guy just sleeping next to Claire's car while we were out. But the problem is that our garage is at a funny angle, and to get Claire's car out, I would have had to drive right over the homeless dude.

We decided that I should back the car out, and see if I could somehow get around him. So I did, and we were able to get out. It's funny because when I turned the car on, the engine was about a foot and a half from this guy's head...and he didn't even wake up. He shifted around a little bit like I was disturbing his beauty sleep, but that's it. He never even looked out from under his blanket. I was glad he moved at least a little bit...he could have been dead!

There are 2 things about this story that irritated me:

1. Look, I know that being homeless must be really hard work, what with the walking and sitting and picking through trash and all...but it was fucking NOON when we left and this guy was still sleeping. Come on! I'm sick of these slacker hobos...no respect for their hardworking hobo forefathers.

2. When we came back home a few hours later, he was gone, but when I checked the next morning, the homeless guy was back!!! The first day that we found him, it was kind of funny in a "Ha ha ha...there's a homeless guy sleeping in our garage. How funny!" The second time wasn't funny. That's when it starts getting creepy. We called the cops, and they came by to tell him to move along.

The good news is that he hasn't been back for the past 3 nights. The bad news is that he left his dirty nasty homeless blanket behind, and it's still in the corner of our garage. Hey, I ain't touching that nasty thing!