Last Monday as I pulled into my parking slot in the under-building parking garage at CityWalk@ Akard where CitySquare has its administrative offices, I noticed a man exiting the garage from the corner nearest my assigned parking spot.
Strange, I thought. What was he up to?
He was nicely dressed in black slacks and a pressed white shirt. He carried a package of some sort in this hands, possibly an attache or a portfolio. He avoided all eye contact as I pulled in. I noted that he left in a bit of a rush.
After parking my car I discovered why he had been in the parking garage and, more particularly, why he had been in such a hurry, as well as what he had been doing.
The evidence consisted of a pool of expanding liquid! In short, this respectable Downtown business man had relieved himself in our parking garage. To be really clear he urinated in the corner.
I feel compelled to report what I saw because my homeless brothers get tagged daily as the despicable people who urinate on the sidewalks and the storefront entrances of our downtown buildings. For the record I'm here to tell you it's not just the homeless people! It's some of the rest of us as well.
One of the things I'm wondering now is whether or not our uninvited guest has made or could make a connection between his own "situation of necessity" and one of the most pressing, daily, fundamental challenges of residing on the streets of our city? Likely he got caught in a real pinch. My homeless friends spend a good bit of time every day searching for public restrooms or places of seclusion like our garage. I hope the realization will come to him, if it hasn't already.
What's really sad is that this gent rushed out, no doubt embarrassed, when he could have come inside and taken advantage of our facilities, along with the formerly homeless persons who call CityWalk "home."
I guess it didn't occur to him or, more likely, he doesn't know us.
4 comments:
Larry, would you ask your friend Gerald Britt how to comment on his blog? I don't necessarily want to comment today but sometimes I would like to. It says that it's restricted to team members. Exactly what does that mean?
Sounds Euro-sophisticated to me! The French would be proud.
Sure, Chris.
I'm so glad you posted that. It's so true--we get to commit acts of mild debauchery and hide behind our middle class status. People are people are people, no matter what kind of clothes we have on or cars we drive. At our core, we're all the same--good, bad and ugly!
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