You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The blue-eyed homeless man.
I’ve seen him a dozen times around my work.
I’ve seen him urinating by the dumpster. I’ve seen him walking down the sidewalk. I’ve seen him at the McDonald’s scrounging a drink.
Often times I see him holding a 40 ounce of beer.
He is dressed in your typical homeless garb, grubby and torn.
He has a back pack that is full of his life belongings.
He is a self-contained vagrant. If it doesn’t fit in his back pack, it is not worth owning.
Today I see him again.
I decided to see this man, today.
I usually drive by him like he doesn’t exist. I usually drive by him and wonder why he lives like he lives.
Today I stopped.
I’m not sure if it was the journalist in me, or if I suddenly developed a conscious.
Today with the temperatures bone numbing cold, I pulled into his abandon restaurant lair and stopped.
It was just him. It was just me.
He was bundled in layers. He was lying on the ground in the breezeway of the Mrs Winners Drive Through.
The restaurant has been closed for over a year, boards in the windows.
I use the driveway as a cut through from Murfreesboro Road during rush hour traffic.
This is when I see the man the most.
He is usually tucked against the wall, hidden in the shadows.
When I leave work, it is usually late and dark.
Today it was extremely cold.
It was 9 degrees this morning. Weather people are spewing it is the coldest it has been in 2 decades.
How cold is it?
I took a wet t-shirt this morning and laid it on the ground.
5 minutes later the t-shirt was stiff as a board, like frozen cardboard.
That’s pretty cold for a human to be outside full-time, I think to myself.
I was thinking about him. I was wondering how he does it, I was wondering why he does it.
If you are homeless, it’s easy to find food and shelter.
People want to help. Nashville is a giving city. The shelters are accommodating with only a handful of rules.
But I’ve learned in my days as a reporter that homeless people who stay on the street, don’t want help or handouts.
They don’t like rules. If you don’t follow rules. The shelters don’t let you come in.
It’s a simple equation.
Some homeless are street denizens by choice. It’s a personal decision that they themselves have made.
I don’t know anything about this man, but I assume, since he is ambulatory, he has options.
For the last several months he has chosen to call this drive though his home.
Today the cold winds of fate blow us together.
Don’t ask me why, But I just pull into the drive through and stop.
I almost don’t know why I’m doing it as I’m doing it.
I lower my window and the homeless man looks right at me.
We are 4 feet from one another.
He usually is hidden under a blanket. He usually has a big winter hat, and a big white beard. His gaze is often distant and lost in confusion.
Though I’ve noticed him many times, I have never stopped to really notice him.
Today he looks at me with piercing blue eyes that explode from a face, bright red, and filled with matted, dirty whiskers.
He has a round Santa Claus like face, that is surrounded by a dark-colored hoodie.
I notice an icicle hanging from the hair under his nose.
He is wearing more clothes than the Michelin Tire Man. He is under a blanket. His mattress is a cardboard box that is soiled.
“Hey man, you doing all right?” I ask.
He stares at me for a moment, then replies crisply.
“Yeah, it’s ok,”
“You have an icicle hanging from your face, man. You gotta be cold?”
“It’s ok if I stay under the blanket,” he says.
“You need help?” I ask.
“I’m OK,” he says again.
“OK, man. Be well.”
I start to drive away.
“Hey,” He shouts.
I stop and look back.
“Thanks for asking about me.” he says.
For the 1st time, he looks like a human being. For the first time he is more than a wandering, vagrant, stumbling down a sidewalk with a forty in his hand.
“Sure thing, man. Sure thing.”
I drive off.
As I pull onto the interstate, I still see his piercing eyes blaring at me like flaming blue sapphires.
I think about the man in the driveway as I head to my story.
I see the ice and snow on the side of the interstate.
I see people running, their breath frozen in the single digit temperatures.
I wonder how the homeless man will survive 2 degree temperatures over night.
I’m not a man with a soft heart for the homeless.
After meeting him, my opinion has not changed. He is here because he has chosen to be here.
I don’t know who he was before he fell through society’s cracks. And I don’t know what tomorrow has in store for the homeless man. But I think I do know that he could get help if he wanted it. I know that he can be assimilated into society, if he would allow it.
There are legions of do gooders who would love to clean him up and give him a fresh start.
But from what I have seen, from what I know, he is content to be here.
To most of us, this is unimaginable.
To be dirty, and hungry, and disgusting, is just unthinkable.
To lie in the cold under a ripped blanket, on top of a soiled mat, is hard to fathom for you and me.
But for the blue-eyed homeless man, it’s reality.
Nashville will be 2 degrees tonight.
The homeless man will fold his arms across his chest to keep himself warm.
Perhaps he will dream about who he once was. Perhaps he has no more dreams to dream.
The homeless man with the sapphire eyes lives by his own code. He lives with a freedom that few of us will know or would want.
Life’s Crazy™