Allen Johnson: My conflicted views about panhandlers
They are daily fixtures on city sidewalks and street corners: A woman in jeans and sneakers, bearing a sign on North Elm that tells a life story of misfortune in fewer characters than a "tweet"; grizzled men on downtown streets, asking for bus fare or extra change for a sandwich; a smooth-faced blonde who appears scarcely in her teens, flashing her own scribbled sign at the entrance to the Target Shopping Center on Lawndale Drive.
Someone much wiser and older than I once said that we ought to give what we can -- that you never know when one of these people one day might be you.
Sometimes I heed that advice. Sometimes I don't.
Which is to say there is no method to my charity. At times I'm so preoccupied and in a hurry that I just don't want to be bothered.
On other occasions, it would feel plain wrong not to find the time and money.
When it comes to street-corner charity I tend to be a soft target. Or not.
To wit, several years ago, a young black man approached me downtown and asked for money. When I said I had none to spare, he glared.
As I crossed the street, he yelled something nasty, punctuating it with the word "Brothuh."
As ashamed as I am to admit it, I yelled back.
Then I thought about how childish this was. I went about my business, feeling a little bit smaller.
Some of these folks clearly are scam artists, and, as this newspaper frequently has reported, have taken in whole church congregations with tall tales that can touch heartstrings and loosen purse strings in one tearful stroke. But there's no way to know.
Do they really need the help? Am I simply providing drug money?
Of course, there are ways to give so you can be sure your money goes to a good cause: United Way, food banks, the Salvation Army and myriad other causes.
But a human being on the street isn't a cause; he's a person. And he can be hard to ignore -- especially when you discover you personally know him.
Several years ago, an unshaven man with crooked teeth and uncombed hair turned out to be a childhood friend. His hollow eyes were unfamiliar, but I recognized his smile. We had a brief, uncomfortable conversation about the painful breakup of his marriage and I handed him a few bills.
He was quick-witted and funny when we were growing up. Now he seemed sad and aimless. Earlier this year, I learned from his sister that he had died in only his 50s.
A second man asked me for food money. I drove him to Wendy's, to make sure that it was truly food he wanted. Along the way, I discovered we had been high school classmates. I haven't seen him since.
A third man I'd see downtown numerous times over the years. Vincent Sims lived around the corner from my family in Woodmere Park, the son of a public school secretary who would give my sister and me occasional rides to what was then Lincoln Junior High. He was a little guy in those days, two or three years younger and seemed softer-spoken than his older siblings.
Years later I would see him on the street, usually downtown, looking dazed and unsteady.
He called me by my old nickname, "Butch," and I almost always would give him money. But I didn't like to think about where he probably was investing it.
The last time I saw Vincent was on East Market Street, late on a Thursday night. He was smiling and clear-eyed and proudly told me he had found a place to live and was working odd jobs cleaning convenience store parking lots.
Months later I read about him on the front page of the News & Record.
"Sims is the poster child for homelessness in Greensboro," Amanda Lehmert wrote in that 2008 piece, headlined, "Can a home save the homeless?" "His silhouette, bent in prayer over a plate of food, graces the cover of the county's 10-year plan to prevent homelessness."
Sims was turning his life around. He had a new apartment and had completed treatment for drug abuse. He was volunteering at Urban Ministry, serving meals where in past years he had gone to be served.
"I moved in my apartment on Christmas Day," he said in that article. "It was a child seeing his first Christmas tree to me. I'm still opening gifts up. I have so many gifts under the tree, I am still opening my gifts."
And now giving gifts of his own.
That's why I'm so torn about panhandlers. And why I understand the new rules that ban panhandling downtown at outdoor dining areas and at ATMs and in parking lots are neither unreasonable nor onerous.
But please understand if I confess to mixed feelings.
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