Homelessness

Okay so being homeless pretty much sucks, we can all agree right? So why don’t people do anything about it? Your guess is as good as mine.

Thank goodness my school is out there to help. Last Thursday night we had 83 people come back to the school, willingly, mind you, and spend the night. Outside. In the darn cold weather. Sounds pretty BA doesn’t it? We slept in some pretty amazing card board boxes too, on the freezing cold cement. My box had some length disabilities. It was nice and big around so that even if I gained a few hundred pounds I would fit comfortably. The problem arose in the horizontal distance department. It barely went up higher than my waist. That’s a slight problem when you’re trying to keep warm; I believe that this sentiment is shared by most people. So I came up with a delightfully intelligent solution. I took a blanket and put about one half on top of the box and then stretched the other half around and under my pillow, creating a sort of lean-to.

I woke up around two in the morning to find, to my great consternation, that the lid covering up the end of my box had blown over and the wind was creating havoc with my body temperature. I could barely tell this by peeking through the crack of the blanket smothering my head. And when I say smothering, I mean it. I tried to remove its silky softness but my hands were covered with gloves and mittens and weren’t functioning their best. I seriously thought, in my just-awoken stupor, that I was going to be trapped in my blanket until I could get someone to rescue me.

I eventually managed to excavate my face and look around me to see what was going on and discovered that my friend, who’s name shall go undisclosed for fear of violating personal rights, was no longer there. Her box was there alright, but her sleeping bag and other personal accessories were MIA. I promptly stole her box and had a major house moving/renovating project. It lasted a total of, oh, about two minutes. I then covered the front end of my much larger box with my blanket and fell asleep until almost six.

At that point I was rudely awakened by another, also unnamed, friend who notified me that it was unfortunately time to get up and leave. The even more rude part of this awakening is that it was indeed snowing/ raining. Not so much fun. The temperature had probably dropped to at least -50 by this point and I was definitely ready for some heat.

At this point you may be wondering if i am making all of this up, which is entirely possible after the brain/apple story. So here is another account of this exciting adventure.

This makes me wonder how homeless people manage to live like that. How can they get food and still stay warm? I know that if I was wandering around in some city scrounging for food or money that I would freeze to death. The good thing is that my school’s event raised over 1400 dollars in donations. This money will go to homeless people in our area, of which there are relatively few, and provide food and other items for them. It definitely makes me feel like a much better person for suffering through that. And now I’m raising awareness just by complaining! What a bargain!