The devil is in the details

Can you spell A-W-K-W-A-R-D?

Before I begin, I just thought I'd let you know that I would consider myself to be extremely liberal politically. I don't think I've been too political in posts yet, so you may not have picked up on that, but most of you who know me well know that this is obvious. This is relevant because the whole rest of this semi-annoyed post is a big fat example of liberal guilt.

I just went down the street to my local laundrymat to put some clothes in the washing machine. What did I find there but a homeless woman, who apparently took up residence there sometime during the day. As soon as I paused to readjust the laundry in my arms to open the door, she got up from sitting and opened the door to help me. The main reason that she opened the door for me was that she also has a dog, and the dog had crapped right in the middle of the doorway, where I definitely would have stepped (particularly since I couldn't see that spot on the floor while carrying my big bag of laundry.) Okay, so this was weird. I was also the only person in the laundrymat (and no one had any clothes in any washers) --apparently I was the only person with the balls to stay when they came upon this situation. As I was putting my clothes in the washers, her cute little beagle ran over to me wanting to play. Then I realized yet another issue. The lady was sitting on the windowsill next to the change machine. Which of course meant that to get quarters, one would have to go stand in front of her (practically in her lap), close enough for her to see how much money someone has on them. I looked in my wallet (which as some of you know, is nice and makes me look like I have more $$ than I actually do) and what did I have? Not enough quarters for one load, let alone the two that I had, a twenty, which is too big for the machine, and a ten. So I got to walk over and stand there and have the maching spit 40 quarters at me, right in front of her. What exactly was I supposed to do in this situation?? Also-generally everyone leaves their laundry while it is washing at this laundrymat. Should I have left, or should I have been more worried about losing my clothes than I might have otherwise? (Someone else came in to put in their laundry as I was almost done)

I ended up leaving and then going back early, having thought better of it. She was gone when I moved my clothes to the dryer, which absolved me from the situation a little. I'm still a little annoyed about the whole thing though. I understand that being homeless is horrific, and I certainly want to help. At the same time, I still feel like it was a little bit of a ploy. It was sort of like she was forcing people to notice her (by which I don't mean the dog, although that certainly helped) and by sitting in a place where we were forced think about (any maybe even show) exactly how much money we had. Its sort of like the people who ask you for money outside of the drugstore actually coming into the drugstore to ask you for money. Every time I get annoyed about it, I feel bad, though. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't fun for her either, in fact I would have been humiliated had it been me. I suppose if she was desparate (sp?) enough to put herself in that situation, then things must be pretty bad, and I ought to have done something.

Okay, I'm going to watch the rest of Survivor, but I'll probably be back with some thoughts later on my day at the lab.

posted by Immunegirl @ 8:17 PM