The other night on my way to the gym, a seemingly homeless, but relatively young guy asked me for money because he was hungry. I apologized, but told him that I only carry keys and my cell phone when I go to the gym. What would I need money for at the gym? I don’t need to be stuffing my face or buying anything! Anyway, the guy seemed genuinely sad and rather lost. A block later, I found myself trying to remember if I had any food at home that I could readily give him. All of my sandwich stuff is in the office. All I had at home that wouldn’t need to be cooked were the madelines. By the time I remembered those, he was already several blocks away. For some reason, I felt really, really bad. I didn’t feel like he was someone that was asking for money so that he could go buy drugs or alcohol. He seemed hungry, really hungry. If I don’t have anything ready-to-eat at home, I’m more likely to actually buy food for someone rather than to give them cash.
In L.A. I remember seeing a guy and his medium-sized dog on a hot summer day laying on Santa Monica Boulevard with a sign stating “Will work for food.” I only lived a few blocks from a McDonalds, which has a Dollar Menu. I bought a few things from the Dollar Menu and gave them to him, making sure to tell him to feed his dog, too. On my way to work downtown one morning, a Filipino guy asked me for money. He actually cried because he was so embarrassed and said that he’d send it back to me, as soon as he could, if I gave him an address to send the money to. I gave him money and told him that I didn’t need it back, that I wished good things for him and that I hoped he got his life in order. At my apartment building, there was a homeless woman sitting in the parking area when I went to empty the trash. She told me that she was starving and asked if I had anything to eat. I actually went upstairs and made a sandwich, then gave it to her. She was so, so happy, as was I.
You know how we Americans always get doggy bags when we go out and have left-overs? That’s apparently not common in France. My French ex-husband said that if you didn’t finish your food in France, it meant that it wasn’t any good! I explained that I’m rarely able to finish an entire plate of food in one sitting, whether it’s good or not. Regardless, I had my ex-husband trained to give his left-over food to homeless people on the streets of San Francisco. If you’re not going to eat it and it’s perfectly good, why throw it away when people are digging in trash cans for something to eat?!
One Thanksgiving we had tons of extra food in the apartment. I think we’d cooked two turkeys and invited many people over, plus the other roommate had left-over turkey AND ham from his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. There was no way that we’d be able to finish all of that food before it went bad. Thus, the day after Thanksgiving, I packed Thanksgiving “care packages” for homeless people and either gave it to them directly or left it by them if they were sleeping. Each “care package” had turkey, ham, stuffing, green salad, plastic cutlery and paper napkins. People were very, very appreciative of it.
One evening another ex-boyfriend of mine and I had dinner at a Korean restaurant here in San Francisco. Neither of us were very enamored of the food, but we took it home, planning to spice it up there so that it would taste better. When we got to my apartment building, there was a young, homeless man sitting on a couch. I told my ex-boyfriend that maybe we should give our food to the homeless person, which we did. The homeless man was very thankful. When we got upstairs, I realized that he had nothing to eat with, so I ran back downstairs to give him some plastic cutlery.
It bothers me to think about how much food I waste every day when there are people that don’t have as much as a slice of bread to eat. We had sandwiches catered in the office the other day. I generally only eat chicken salad, turkey or possibly tuna sandwiches. I chose a turkey sandwich, but ended up throwing it away because it had cranberries on it. I detest cranberries! The cranberries had already soaked through most of the bread and left that reddish tinge on the turkey, so I threw it in the trash and ate soup from home instead. After it was already in the trash, I remembered that I could have given it to some homeless person in the Embarcadero (of which there are many).
I don’t always remember to think of those who have nothing to eat, but I try. I feel enormous guilt when I waste food when others are on the street begging. I waste money every day on a bag of chips, a soda, a candy bar or what have you. There’s just no excuse for me to do that when there are hungry people who would be more than happy to have something from McDonald’s Dollar Menu or something/anything similar.