Beggars Can't be Friggin' Choosers

First of all, WASH. A clean beggar is less likely to scare away potential suckers. And, damn. How hard is it to find a clean cup?

For some weird reason, I attract beggars. I also tend to draw flies, and small children flock to be near me. Perhaps I smell. I don’t know. But honestly, since my youth, I have frequently suffered the uncomfortable approach-of-the-beggar, and until last weekend, I didn’t know how to properly handle such an encounter.

Okay. I take that back. One other time in my life, just off a ragged shift as a burger-flipper in the mother of a hotbox that is Wendy’s kitchen, a timid fellow with a draggy leg advanced on me in the parking lot, and I dispensed of his sorry ass rapidly and righteously. He handed me a card on which was printed, “I am deaf. Please help me by accepting this key chain.” Or something like that. What it didn’t say was, “Give me a dollar for this piece of shit that any Sunday school fucker with some beads and opposable thumbs could have assembled in less than a minute, so I will be earning, like, $60 an hour, which is ten times what you just made in that mother of a hotbox that is Wendy’s kitchen.” But I knew that’s what he meant. And as a deaf girl with a father who is also pretty damned deaf and who has worked his ass off his entire life, I did not appreciate the gentleman’s pursuit. I unleashed upon him an assault that he couldn’t hear—unless the deafness were a ruse, which is entirely possible—and with my pointed gestures, backed. His. Ass. Up. He truly fled as fast as his draggy leg would allow.

It took me thirty years to gradually grow my balls again.

In the past when beggars appeared, I’d sweat and fret and guilt-out and hand over some cash like an idiot. I knew the fools were going to blow the cash on alcohol or drugs. But I used to be powerless against the thought that the person might possibly somehow be hungry. And I cannot stand for another person to be hungry, except maybe the people in Ethiopia or wherever because they are not up in my face all the time, and when pictures of their crying, fly-covered selves flash on late, late night television, I solve that with a simple click of the remote and then go get a snack.

But there are whole networks of fake-needy assholes who stand there forlornly with those retarded signs (“Stranded. Need gas.”) at interstate off-ramps. These folks work a circuit in which someone drives the lot of them to the various exits, and they rotate all around large cities or smaller areas, just raking in YOUR hard-earned money. Tax free, people! Stop giving these fuckers your money. You are going to pay taxes on it. Why should deadbeats get to have it for freeeeeeee? They fully intend for the guilt-out to work. And for all these years, I’ve let it work. But I graduated from handing out my coins to diverting my gaze—pretending I was concentrating on getting my air conditioner vents to all point on me, for instance—to speeding up to make it through the goddamned light so that I would not be the car right next to the beggar. It is so much harder to bite into my fresh, hot Whopper with cheese when there is a (pseudo) starving man pressed against my window.

What permanently changed my ways, you ask? Here’s what. Last weekend, my daughters and I were on a journey to visit my dad for a little pre-Fathers’ Day celebration when the elder had to go potty, which is just a colossal surprise since she never has to go every fifteen freaking minutes, especially right after we just stopped a mile before, and I asked her specifically to go squeeze some pee out, but no.

So we pulled over, and my younger daughter and I stood conversing while waiting for the liquid gold to fill up my gas tank. This dude in paint-spattered clothes sauntered up to my child and started his spiel. Perhaps he didn’t see me as he slinked over. His mistake. My daughter, not well-prepared for such an onslaught, retreated into her shell and peeked out with her large beseechers to Mommy for help. I didn’t even give the guy time to finish his question. I rushed forward, grabbed him by the nutsack, slammed a foot into his left leg so that it cleanly snapped backward at the knee joint, jammed my fingers into his eye sockets and left him broke and broken there on the oil-spotted Georgia asphalt. Okay. I might be exaggerating a little. I told him the fuck off, though, and didn’t stop telling him until he found someone else to harass. If you are a parent or if you even have a pet, you know exactly where my tirade originated. Just leave my cub alone.

Anyway, I’m not going back to guiltville now. Beggars better beware. I’ve had it with lending a helping hand only to have it returned to me with bite marks and a whole lot of empty.