Looking busy, busy looking...

I “tossed some peanuts” yesterday, while I was soaking in the rain. This project I’m working on has me in the field making decisions and writing stuff, sometimes I have to wait for others finish their part. While waiting, sometimes I’ll scrape the stickers of the street furniture but there are no stickers to scrape, so I stand/walk around doing my best to look busy.

I run out of all my busy looks, I really don’t have a lot of them, but during my looking busy, I passed a panhandler twice. It’s raining lightly and he looks like a good guy, just down on his luck so I do my best to peel off two singles without being noticed. I don’t mind strangers catching me passing money to those in need but I’ll be damned if I let my co-workers catch me.

So, I have the singles hidden and my hand and slip them into his cup while I mention the weather. I make like I’m just talking about the weather and not trying to slip him money because as much as I dislike talking about the weather it’s better than acknowledging that this guy is down on his luck. The guy plays along tells me the forecast, I look him in the eye, he’s doing alright, he’s doing his best with what he’s got, he’s alright with it, so so am I.

Without looking, he relocates the bills to his pocket. My message of desiring avoidance has been received.

He reminds me of some guy who used to hire me to mow his lawn, the guy remembered always gave me more than I asked. If I didn’t take it he’d mail it to the house and then I would feel like an ass that I caused this guy to go through the effort of mailing me stuff, so now I just take that hand-off/hand-out. My foolish pride is not worth the effort of mailing cash to my home address.

The guy remembered widowed his wife.

I wish this new guy good luck. And thank the guy remembered.