The Crow's Nest

I spent Labor Day weekend panhandling from the medians of Plantation, Fla., with a homeless woman who once stayed up 16 days straight smoking crack.

Her skin was burnt to leather from years asking drivers for money at intersections.

Along with 20 other student journalists from around the country, a homeless shelter filled with addicts, liars, sex offenders and a prostitute was ours for the weekend. We chose our assignments to create a newspaper issue in 36 hours, and, with little supervision, pursued them.

I chose to work with a professional panhandler.

The privately run shelter prints the second-largest homeless publication in the country, called “The Homeless Voice.” For the most part, the newspaper is a prop for shelter residents to hold while asking for money from drivers stopped at intersections.

Newspaper vendors work 6:30 a.m. to about 6 p.m. six days a week. They use the money they make to pay their shelter rent and feed their cigarette habits.

I got to work with a particularly good vendor, Jena Smith. Smith, 42, is the victim of heinous domestic violence. She contracted Hepatitis C from shooting up heroin. She lost over 100 lbs. smoking crack. She’s an alcoholic. When I met her, it had been 20-some days since her last lapse.

I watched her walk up and down the medians for hours.

She wore a low-cut shirt under her neon-green jersey vest. Before we walked to the median, she warned me, “Don’t be afraid if a guy’s [penis] is hanging out.” She said she had just seen one the day before. It’s apparently a common occurrence at busy intersection stoplights.

After watching her, I felt I should try her job. I went to another median in the hat she let me borrow, and with an empty bucket heavy as lead, I held it up to drivers in their cars.

People mostly ignored me. I was invisible in my neon-green jersey vest and yellow shirt on that median. Someone gave me a bible. Another person told me to “send it up to God.”

In over an hour, I made $9. If I were at the same shelter as Jena, $5.40 (60 percent) of that would belong to me.

While I stood under the screaming sun, I thought about how I’d rather succumb to addiction and whore myself out for money than do this everyday.

Drivers would study me before coming to a stop and would then look ahead as if I wasn’t there. After awhile I remember thinking, “I wish I could tell them I’m one of them.”

This thought, based on the superficiality of having an iPhone just like them or a car just like them, made me realize that the homeless are also just like them.

Just like the homeless, I had to swallow people judging me on the other side of their windshields who didn’t know me, my story or how I got to where I am.

The homeless stigma of disregard and people’s disappointment in you as a human is real. On that median, I was sub-human.

“I just don’t understand how anyone could let themselves get to that point” is something I’ve said and I’ve heard. Most people who are homeless are unstable or they’re addicts. If you’re focused on getting your fix for the day, by the time you look up from the black jack table and your money is gone or look up from your drink and you’re already too drunk or you pull away from your crack pipe and you’re already too high it’s too late for any self-realizations. You’re gone.

Last week I learned that denying someone your chump change “you’ve worked hard for” or your parents “worked hard for” isn’t a lesson to a beggar, it’s a time delay. A lot of the homeless can’t get sober or stand on two feet by themselves. At the end of the day, they’re going to buy whatever it is they’re going to buy.

At the shelter, I met people my age who grew up with foster parents motivated by the monthly foster care income check. The day the minors turned 18, they were kicked out.

At the shelter, I met people my age who claimed “suicidal tendencies” to get baker-acted and have a place to stay for a few nights so they didn’t have to sleep on the streets.

A lot of homeless people are intelligent, well spoken, courteous and ashamed of their situation. A lot of homeless people are liars, manipulators, moonstruck lunatics and blame others for their situation.

Later that day at the intersection, a car stopped in the turning lane. The people inside were smoking pot, and Jena and I could smell it. Jena held up her bucket laughing and said, “Weed the needy?” They looked ahead and pretended they didn’t see her. She shrugged it off.

“I don’t judge people. If anything, I can relate,” she said.