Alms Giving

The hunger had been building in me for a while.  I had an assignment to complete, and I finally began to enjoy its puzzling nature, and to accept that this wasn’t going to be another case I could crack in a couple of minutes.  “I could program the cross validation across the entire sample range, instead of using all the observations”, my stats inner voice was kicking in on overdrive to the point where I could actively hear myself speak in my own mind.  But my seemingly stroke of genius was greeted by yet another frustrating “error, lengths do not match” respond from my statistics program, and I gave in to my hunger and went to get some food.

“Maybe if I just coerce the variable to equal lengths…” My thoughts and my body continued to wander aimlessly as I searched for suitable food to satisfy both my yearning for catharsis and my grumbling bowels. I had given up on peanut butter and jelly pita sandwiches not too long ago, and tried to avoid yet another infringement of my economics studies on my thought processes in the form of a cost-benefit analysis incorporating taste, walking distance, cost and familiarity into my decision as to where to eat.  And besides, today was statistics, not econ. So I settled for the closest Subway – low cost, familiar, close by and at least somewhat versatile.  

Profusely lip syncing to Sia’s “Elastic Heart”, over-enunciating each syllable just to get a response from my co-pedestrians ended up assisting me in avoiding all eye contact across the busy streets of London. Its melodious tune intertwined with darker lyrics, for a pop song at least, finally allowed me stop thinking of myself as a master of the Matrix for writing three lines of code continuously, and to enjoy the pleasant anonymity that a city produces.

“Could you spare some change sir?” The panhandler had interrupted my favorite contemplative line in the song with his glazing eyes. I Suddenly realized that I had matched his glare with my own and that in response I would have to actively contemplate whether I would actually pull out some change from my pocket, or just fake the casual “I don’t have any” glance with the compulsory shoulder shrug. I had some change, I knew I had some. But I went through the entire enactment of scavenging my pockets to find a wayward coin, if only to buy some time to fully remember or recognize whether I really wanted to give alms to the toothless man who austerely sat just below me.

You see, just the other day I had also been approached by a seemingly transient older fellow, who asked for 14 pee. It was such an appealingly low and yet specific amount that cried out a purpose, a cause. Before I could even ask why he needed exactly 14 pence, and not 16 or 12 my hands immediately reached into my right pocket and pulled out a 20 pee coin. It felt so obligatory to give that man something that he obviously needed at that moment.  But here I was, confronted by an ostensibly similar situation but my hands reacted differently. As they aimlessly searched for a coin that had already been found, they were retrieved literally empty-handed as I shrugged in an apologetic yet glib expression. “Sorry” I said, and marched on to retrieve my £3 reward in the form of a Subway sandwich.

 As I stood there contemplating whether I should get a chicken tikka flatbread or a meatball on 9-grain wheat, I felt saturated by guilt. My days as a wayfarer, or at least a wanderer, had left me flummoxed me and I wondered how I could so bashfully deny this young man of something as petty as spare change in such a time of need. My dormant consumerist rebuttal of “he’s probably gonna drink it away anyway” left me unfazed, and I allowed the remorse to consume me instead. The queue of younger girls in pressed British school-girl outfits slowly dispersed as they each made a decision of spicy Italian or BLT, and I settled on a chicken tikka, but with 9-grain wheat, and awaited.

As I left the shop, I paused. Our eyes met once again, but this time he had no expectations of me. I had turned him down already, and a quick visit to a corporate deli would not have changed my mind about him. I imagined him imagining me to be a heartless aspiring capitalist just as I pulled into my pockets once again. Quickly, without a fuss this time, I pulled out the few coins I had in there and gave them to him, intentionally not selecting the coins of smaller magnitude. “A good day to you sir”, I said as I repositioned my headphones once again beneath my hat.

Sia’s song was just reaching its ending crescendo - “Be my friend, wrap me up” she whispered in my ear.

“Hold me, wrap me up

Unfold me, I am small

I’m needy, warm me up

And breathe me…”

And yeah, the song was on repeat.