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I Had A Coffee Date With A Homeless Man
He told me something that shocked me!
If you follow my stories at all, you’ll know that I volunteered at a homeless shelter for 2 years before leaving Canada and moving to Guatemala. I would go to the shelter and feed them dinner, sit and have coffee with them, chat and laugh with them. It is one of my favourite memories from life in Northern Ontario.
Every now and then I would go hang out with them on the streets.
One cold night I grabbed two coffees at a Tim Horton’s drive through, drove downtown and found one lonely fellow sitting on the side of the road. I parked my car, grabbed a blanket from the back seat and went and sat with him.
“Wanna have a coffee date with me” He laughed lightly and agreed. I sat down beside him, covered us in the blanket and we had coffee. Right there in downtown Sudbury on the sidewalk.
It was 8:00 pm on Friday night.
Hanging with the homeless man
He had an empty styrofoam cup in front of him in hopes to gather enough money to get a room at the Salvation Army for the night. I believe the rooms are $10–15 a night. One thing I knew for sure, they weren’t free.
We sat and chatted. He was around my age. He had served in the army for some years. He had no family to speak of, no money, a tiny pension. He had no belongings. Nothing.
What he did have was stories for me and I was all ears.
As we sat and chatted, the odd person would throw money in his styrofoam cup. Actually, only about 1 in 30 people dropped money in his cup. I was surprised by this and wondered if my presence there was deterring people from putting money in his cup (fear not, I took care of that when I left 💗).
I’ll admit, I was freezing my ass off and wondered how on earth they do it. The homeless people. Stay out every night, beg for money, huddle in corners and doorways.
Oy.
How bad is it out here anyway?
I wanted to know what it was really like and how hard it was to get money, how did people treat them, what his biggest challenges were, etc. I wanted to know what it was…
