The routine of asking for spare change is a common sight and commitment made famous by the beggars of the world. But what the world seems to ignore is that fact that anyone can be a beggar, any age. Today I encountered my youngest beggar, en route to my class downtown. Age 18 and clearly in a rut, Jake was walking up the aisle asking for a spare dollar to get on the next bus to continue his day. I thought of giving him the spare dollar, but having no job lowers my moral values in sympathy and sharing for the other humans. And I could think to myself was "Damn" at the sight of Jake, someone who was younger than me and heading down a nasty path in life. What was more bizarre was the chuckling from his fiend of a friend, who sat and witnessed Jake's struggle for obtaining a single dollar. This friend was light years into the life of a wandering beggar, with frequent infatuations with the darker sides of life on earth: his clothes possessed that aging green only street beggars can create, had tattoos on his face, and wielded a charismatic smirk, knowing that life is a bitch and there's not much else to do but to smile and keep going.
Jake switched over the other train car after failing to get one dollar from our current car; it didn't take him long to return, retreating to his lowlife of a mate. Maybe this was a foreshadow to how his life would function, by asking for money until he's reached the point where his friends are his final resort, where there's no where else to turn, even the trains themselves.
I named him Jake because that's what the friend had called him.
