Here Abby, or Near Abby
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Happily en route to Appalachia
Evergreen Adventuress’s job
Raconteuse with nary wail nor sob
Earning fine time being gently-laughin’-ey
It was unusual panhandling. Most often I’ve been tapped for money; sometimes I was hit up for a bus pass or transfer. This is the first time I was asked to purchase and donate multiple vitamins.
I am not an easy touch. My younger brother had more than one bout of homelessness, and had his HOMELESS/HUNGRY/PLEASE HELP cardboard sign; yet on at least one occasion he told me NOT to give money to some cardboard-signers unless I wanted to enable their continued hard-drug use. Also, I am congenitally stingy–might as well own up. But here I had an opportunity to get something in return. The vitamins were $12.99 plus tax; I think I got my money’s worth.
Anybody in the Etherverse want to render their opinion about panhandling, this one in particular or generally? Here’s your chance!
One with Clay, Image and Text 
I’d never really thought much about this before….In my opinion, in a prosperous country like Canada, where I live, with social security and help organisations, panhandling is essentially what you do when you are either so disorganized you cannot manage to get help, or so entrenched in your way of life you do not want, or can’t bring yourself to, pay they price organised help demands: Sobering up, settling down, getting off the street, drying out.
However, when I am solicited, I have no idea which one of these is the ‘problem’. Who is deserving but unlucky, who is undeserving and lazy; so I practice what I have just this instant decided to name RAK. Random Acts of Kindness. I give a bit more than the absolute minimum, and I try to smile as I do it. That, is, when I just don’t just look the other way and walk by.
I haven’t got a clue if it’s any use, if I’m just doing the minimum to satisfy my conscience.
On another tack, if you get vitamins in return, is it still panhandling or just solicitation? What was the difference between Abby and the girls and boys that regularly come by my house to sell coffee and chocolate for a school trip to New York?
Michel Lamontagne
There may not be any more difference than that Abby is a grownup, if a young one.
Thanks for the smile I got, thinking about being RAK’d with non-guilt. 🙂
RAK’d with non-guilt; LOL