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Socioeconomic strata
Sep. 6th, 2013 05:33 pmI stopped this morning to talk to a guy who'd been spare-changing outside the gym all week. He didn't seem like the usual street type, and told me one day that he liked my outfit (which made me laugh -- the only feature of that outfit was its skin-tight nature).
So today I dug up some change and then sat down for a couple of minutes. His name is Matt. His story is that he broke the fingers on his left hand (seems legit, he has a new-looking splint on them and was perfectly articulate about this), and none of his three bosses will work him until the fingers are healed. So he gets to spare-change for a few weeks. He was clean, articulate, non self-pitying.
It makes me think thoughts about how much it must suck to be THAT dependent on one's entire body being functional to make a living. The brain is a safer thing to rely on, protected as it is inside a skull. Even my acro teachers can work when they're hurt (teaching, if not gigs) so long as they refrain from demoing things that bother the injury. I know that if my fingers were broken, Google would be happy to pay for a chording keyboard for me, and/or would accept my slower typing for a few weeks.
So today I dug up some change and then sat down for a couple of minutes. His name is Matt. His story is that he broke the fingers on his left hand (seems legit, he has a new-looking splint on them and was perfectly articulate about this), and none of his three bosses will work him until the fingers are healed. So he gets to spare-change for a few weeks. He was clean, articulate, non self-pitying.
It makes me think thoughts about how much it must suck to be THAT dependent on one's entire body being functional to make a living. The brain is a safer thing to rely on, protected as it is inside a skull. Even my acro teachers can work when they're hurt (teaching, if not gigs) so long as they refrain from demoing things that bother the injury. I know that if my fingers were broken, Google would be happy to pay for a chording keyboard for me, and/or would accept my slower typing for a few weeks.
