I’m originally from New York and have lived and worked in Manhattan, and now work in Philadelphia, so in my life I’ve encountered some homeless people. In the old days, before my time, they were sometimes called “hobos” (if they liked to ride trains). Another word for “homeless people” — a less polite one — is “bums.” (People don’t use that word much anymore, except to describe professional athletes who aren’t playing well, or politicians, as in, “Throw the bums out.”) 

I’m on vacation in Toronto this week. It seems to be a pleasant-enough city, but it is a city, and we’re staying downtown. In our first two days we had four encounters with bums (I can’t vouch for their housing status so will refrain from labeling them “homeless”). The first was outside the Royal Ontario Museum.

We had visited to see the dinosaur skeletons and stuffed animal carcasses and learn that global warming is going to kill everyone and everything pretty soon. After, we stopped at a hot dog cart for lunch. Toronto hot dog carts have flame grills and you can get varieties of sausage as well as veggie dogs and chicken dogs and all the food is jumbo. So my wife and son and I were happily eating lunch on a slab of granite or granite-looking bench-like structure, a slick seating arrangement outside the museum. A bum sidled up and sat next to me. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions that he was a bum; he had a shaggy beard, which doesn’t alone establish anything, but then I saw he only had one shoe and on the other foot was a dirty sock. Most non-bums have a full set of shoes.

The bum sat next to me for a minute or two, shifting and fidgeting, before asking me if I had spare change for a soda. My response was a little odd – it just came out. I said, “No, thank you.” Like he’d made me a generous offer that I was politely declining. He waited another minute and then asked if I might have spare change for him to buy some water. As if I declined to give him money because I was opposed to him spending it on soda and would feel differently if he were going to make a healthier choice. Not being the sort of person to dictate to anyone their personal health choices or how they spend the money they have earned from a hard day of begging, his switch to water didn’t sway me.

Walking down a street that evening on the way to dinner, we encountered an aggressive bum. He rushed right up to me, with a cup extended, and blocked me as I walked and practically shoved his cup in my face as he asked for money. I weaved around him, and then he similarly got in my wife’s personal space. He didn’t touch any of us or shout, and we continued walking, but he certainly got close enough, and was aggressive enough, that a person would have been justified in giving him a shove. I have no wish to shove bums. And I didn’t feel hostile towards this one even in retrospect. But mostly the reason I think he is not shoved very often is that he took us completely by surprise. He probably does that to most people. We’re just not accustomed to a stranger getting in our face like that without warning. Considering that I was walking in a big city with a child, had I known this man was going to get that close to us and if I’d had time to think about it beforehand, I would have been at least a little more aggressive. I’m not saying I would’ve slugged the guy in the jaw if I had it to do again, but someone certainly might throw a punch in reaction to someone rushing up to confront them and their children at night on a city street.

We also saw bums who didn’t talk to us at all but held signs. Two were memorable:

The first was being held by a woman curled up with a man in a doorway. It was still daylight out. The woman was pregnant and her pale belly was sticking out beneath her shirt. Her sign informed passersby that she was 8 months pregnant and needed money for her baby. She obviously cared for her baby-in-waiting very much. Also, she was smoking a cigarette.

The second sign we saw later that day was the best one we’ve seen so far. The guy holding it might not have been homeless. His clothes looked like what many early 20-somethings wear. He seemed to have all his teeth. But since he was holding a sign asking for money (and not a sign indicating that he was donating the money to charity), I think that qualifies him as a bum. But at least he was creative. This is what his sign said:

“Being chased by ninjas. Need spare change for Kung Fu lessons.”

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