Words of a Wise Man

So I was taking the bus home from school today. There was a homeless man on the bus, seated across from where I was standing. He was pale and had brown hair and a beard. He was 31, according to what he said. The bus had maybe forty people in it. Not crowded but not empty either.

This homeless man, he was speaking out loud. Not to anyone in particular. He was just speaking out loud, in a volume that was just a little bit loud, so that a decent amount of people could hear but no one would be bothered.

He talked about how the federal government was not doing enough to combat climate change and protect the environment. He talked about how climate change was getting worse and the government wasn’t doing enough to stop it because they cared about the fossil fuel industry more than peoples’ lives. He mentioned how scary it was that there still wasn’t snow in November.

He also voiced that public transit (buses, LRT, etc) should be free. Because that would help the environment and because it would give homeless people a space to stay out of the cold. Also because it would help poor people get to where they needed to go without becoming broke. He expressed that it gets really cold in the winter. And especially recently, since climate change is causing the Arctic vortex to get looser so all the cold winds from the Arctic are coming into the south. And if homeless people had somewhere warmer to go in the winter, like a bus for example, that would really help a lot of people.

He discussed how most homeless people don’t act rowdy or unruly on the bus, and how a lot of middle class people do act rowdy and unruly on the bus. Which tracks well with what I’ve seen, the only rowdy people I’ve seen have all been middle class, and I’ve ridden the bus a whole lot. And he discussed how homeless people have a human right to be somewhere warm.

He talked about anti homeless architecture on the buses. The new seats on the buses, the plastic seats, they make it harder for people to lie down and sleep. (There are three places on each bus that each have three seats in a row together and one place that has five seats.) He explained how if there are enough seats for everyone, which there often is, then homeless people sleeping on the bus aren’t bothering or hurting anyone.

He also explained that homeless people deserve to be able to sleep on the bus, because they deserve somewhere to sleep that isn’t cold. See the thing is, and most people in my city don’t know this, the homeless shelters are overflowing and they don’t have enough space for everyone. Anyways, as the homeless man was explaining, a lot of homeless people have no choice but to sleep outside. And when you sleep outside on a day or night when it’s really cold (which is happening more frequently due to the polar vortex becoming looser and coming south due to climate change), you may not wake up at all. Or you will wake up with frost bite and lose body parts. This really disturbed me, the reality of people going to sleep in the horrific cold and not waking up at all.

He discussed the inflation that is happening recently due to corporate price gouging. How food is more expensive, and homeless people can’t afford to buy the food they need. He discussed how it’s hard for homeless people to buy food to begin with since they can’t cook anything due to not having kitchens.

And he expressed how so many of the people he met on the streets were the kindest people ever. How they had so much kindness for him. How they gave up what little they had in order to help him out. How they were so generous, how they helped him and each other even at great personal sacrifice. He talked about how someone even gave him their shoes once.

I told him that I was listening to what he was saying, that I agreed and that I was glad he was saying this. He shook my hand, and then we sat down to talk together. He told me that he wasn’t lazy, that he had to walk around all day. I told him that that must be exhausting. And truly it is very exhausting having to walk around all day, I know that from personal experience. And homeless people do have to do that because if they stay in one place then the cops come to beat them and steal their possessions. He talked about how he made sure to properly put out his cigarettes so that he didn’t cause fires, and about how he didn’t litter.

I told him that I wished I had something I could give him. (At the time I didn’t have any money or food on me and I didn’t even have a hat on me.) He said it was okay since he had some raw chicken hot dogs and some wonder bread and some cheap ketchup. I had to get off the bus at that point because it was my stop. But I believe that it’s very important that his story is told and shared.