Episode 6: Childhood Memorabilia Meets the Housing Crisis

So apparently the homeless are going door to door now in Harrisonburg. And now, they seem to be offering worthless personal items in exchange for hard cash. I suppose you could almost admire the impudence of this—if this were a trend in a history book, I suppose we’d word it something like this: “a movement drawing on two of the best American marketing strategies, the Yard Sale, which masked the worthless nature of items by associating them with the grass that is always greener psychology, as well as the Take Out/Deliver Convenience which permeated all of America at this time.”

Now, like the Crazies of the previous blog, the homeless probably pull in at a close second on my list of paranoid aversions to the real world. Now, I’m not a snob, I’m just very…protective of my investments. But here—you decide.

It was an innocent Wednesday night—no one would have or should have guessed that Dutch would be well into his fourth beer, and just happy enough to stuff five bucks into the smelly hand of the first homeless man that knocked on our door.

Synesthesiac that I am—he looked like rotten yellow cabbage, wearing what I like to think of as a lower class terrorist outfit—a giant green coat, that for some reason forced him to continuously check his pockets in the manner of someone who’d just lost their keys.

“You don’t know what this means to me,” he kept on repeating, in the disgustingly earnest way of someone who’s entire arsenal of personality consists of earnestness.  “I’m gonna bring yall something, just you wait. I’m gonna bring yall a present.”

“No, please don’t,” Dutch said, looking sheepish. “That’s okay, we don’t need anything.”

“No, I’m gonna!” the man called from the yard, already hurrying away. He stopped to wave. “Just you wait! I’m gonna bring yall a present!” he called.

Dutch closed the door, and Amanda and I, who’d been standing open-mouthed in the foyer behind him, scurried away in the manner of people who’d been caught watching someone double-fisting at the slot machines.

Over the next couple of days, Amanda and I had a series of hasty anxious conversations about the potential dangers this little drunken exchange would provoke.

Amanda would stand in the middle of my room, shoulders slightly hunched as though imagining a defensive conversation with the Duke of Dutchdom, her huge lemer-like eyes filled with worry, glancing occasionally out of the window.

“My thing is, I just don’t want him coming here all the time, you know?” she said. “I mean, I know Dutch has his reasons for doing things, he’s kind of the head honcho and whatnot, but I really don’t think he realizes, like, this guy is going to think we’re the fucking, Mercy House.”

“We are not the Mercy House,” I concurred.

“We are the Fatalistic Farmer,” Amanda agreed.

We sat staring out the window for a minute. These little exchanges between us really got the rat running, if you will, in our fatalistic college minds. You can’t fight homelessness with five dollars and you certainly can’t fight the homeless with drunken Dutch’s around.

Tab walked in with half an avocado and a spoon.

“You know, this really makes me want to write more about politics and the economy,” I said, directing this comment at my fellow writer, and avocado lover. “We’re just so disattached from our time period. We don’t even have a name for it. Like, look at what a botched up job the media’s doing—The Housing Crisis. The Failing Economy. The Banking…Debacle. The Foreclosure…Years. Come on, journalists, we’re not naming an L.M. Montgomery book here—think Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

Tabitha was still scooping the insides out of an avocado, and I guess this made her incapable of the response I was looking for. “Or go back to the good old history books, where we’ve got stuff like The Dark Ages. Yeah, that’s good. Classic, appropriate.”

Amanda laughed, and as is usual with her, broke into a little song-gig. “College students gotta name the years, we’re all almost as screwy as Brittney Spears! Tabitha, she wants to go on back, Maybe she’s still living, in the Love Shack!”

We laughed, and then were brought back to reality by he sound of a van pulling up to the neighbor’s driveway and honk honking. Not pizza delivery.

We sighed, and shook our heads, all feeling a little guilty for not taking things seriously.

Sure enough, not two days later, Yellow Cabbage returned. Same coat. I was on my way to a mid-term, and with all the attitude of a second grader who doesn’t want to go to Mexico no more more more if there’s a stinky fat homeless on her door door door.

“Um, if you’re here for money, I don’t have any,” I said, trying to pull off the epic close door open door move all in one gesture. But the man put his hand up to stop me.

“No, no,” he protested, looking shocked that I would assume such a thing. “No, uh, member I told you I was gonna bring you something?”

Oh my God, sentences like that are usually followed by raucous laugher of circumstancial irony, followed by, “Well I did, bitch! Happy fucking birthday!” Bang! Bang! Bang!

I winced and shut my eyes, but when I opened them again, the alarming sight of a musty, moldy stuffed animal met my eyes. The man has his arm thrust all the way out, so that, what appeared to be a frog in tap dancing attire, was almost kissing my nose. As they say, bad association spoils useful hygiene, even in reptiles i.e. the frog smelled like the man. Bad.

“Oh my—uh, thank you. I will, just, pass this on to them, okay?” I gingerly took the animal in two pinched fingers and set it down on the radiator beside me.

“Yeah, yeah, I told you I was gonna bring you something, now didn’t I?” he said, still with that kicked dog expression.

“Yeah, thanks.” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, I thought they might like that. Just tell them that’s what I thought.”

“Okay then.”

He shuffled for a minute on the stairs, moving his hands around like an episode of Inspector Gadget gets Chicken Pox. “Well, you know, you wouldn’t happen to have any cash on you, would you? Anything at all, like a dollar?”

“No. I already said, I don’t have any money for you, okay?”
“Oh, nothing at all?” he asked.

“No, now please go away.”

“Okay, now, but I did think you’d like that, though. And, uh, thank you.”

I watched with relief as he slumped down the sidewalk, and reminded myself to later suggest to Amanda a song written from the point of view of a stuffed animal that a little boy had once clutched every night, who wanted to travel to the White House and protest with signs that said, Childhood Memorabilia have rights too! Don’t let the Homeless use us as thank you presents!