Tom

Lindsay and I met a homeless man named Tom yesterday. It wouldn’t have happened if my TV’s projection bulb hadn’t blown out… We couldn’t watch TV so we decided to go for a walk. That’s when we met Tom.

I think we startled him at first… probably because he wasn’t expecting to see two people going for a walk late at night. I knew he was a bit nervous so I reached out my hand to shake his and introduced myself and Linds.

Then we just let him talk. And he had so many stories. So many stories and so many suspicions about God and church and just about everyone else.

I told him about a place I had just visited earlier that day where he might be able to get some help, but he wasn’t interested. He was too suspicious. But more than that, I think he just wanted to do it on his own. We asked if we could get him something, anything, and the only thing he wanted was a padlock. No food, no water, just a padlock that he could use to lock up his clothes at LA Fitness when he goes to shower using his trial membership passes.

I hear a lot about “the homeless population in Santa Ana”… I forget sometimes that they have names, and stories, and creative survival methods.