Thursday, November 20, 2008

What a Weird Day!

Ok so this is going to be a quick little blog, but i just wanted to talk about two events yesterday, neither of them are super over the top make you scratch your head and say "huh?!" But at the same time they are not typical Wednesday occurrences.

Ok so first of all, there is this homeless guy who sits out in front of my building in a wheelchair everyday. He's a really nice guy, i've never seen him drunk, he doesn't yell at people, and alot of the people in the building have conversations with him sometimes. So every so often when i've got some loose change i send it his way. Anyways i was walking by him yesterday and he was all smiles and just starts talking to me. Here is a verbal account as best as i can remember from our exchange.

"Hey man you might have seen me yesterday sitting here playing with a watch?"

"Actually no i didn't see that, but why what's up?"

"Ok so yesterday i'm sitting here and i bought this watch off a crackhead for two bucks!"

"Oh yeah, nice, seems like a good deal, was it a nice watch?"

"Well that's the thing i bought it and I immediately went to a jeweller to get it appraised."

"And what did he tell you?"

"Well at first he told me that it might be just a knockoff, like a five dollar watch or something. But he couldn't find it in any of his books or online or anything. So he told me he'd hang onto it and find out for me. So i called him again today and he told me to come in. So i went in and you'll never guess!"

(He is literally busting and can barely talk at this point, he's so goddamn excited. He's almost trying to say words faster than his mouth can process them. And he has a little zip up pouch in his lap. And he points at it. I can't see any money in it, but i can see a little orange ticket, about the size of a business card with stuff written on it.)

"I can't see that man what does it say?"

"6500 BUCKS!"

"WHAT!?!?!"

"Yeah man, 6500 bucks it's worth! See look!"

(Again he points at the ticket, and sure enough it's a jeweller's card, with the amount written on it! He starts laughing when he sees the shocked expression on my face. At this point i consider knocking his wheelchair over and stealing the ticket)

"Man that's amazing! Congratulations, there's your meal ticket for a long long time!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHA I know I know! I'm going to go into the welfare office and when they give me my cheque i'm going to say, NO THANKS! I DON'T NEED IT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAH!!!"

"Hahaha, ok well hang onto that ticket, don't take it out of there, and don't let it out of your sight!"

"I wont man, i'm going to get it tattooed to my body!"

"You also realize now that you told me this, that i'm never going to give you any change again!"

(He has a good laugh at this, i again congratulate him on his good fortune, and head back inside)

So there you go, not your typical Wednesday afternoon story as i said, but you gotta feel good for the guy, i mean sure it sucks that someone out there lost a 6500 dollar watch, but if you have a watch that's worth that much, you're probably not strapped for cash, and the guy didn't steal it, he bought it off some "crackhead" as he put it. So hopefully he puts the money to good use.


My second story is not nearly as interesting, not even close actually, and will take maybe 30 seconds to write down. But again it's one of those things you see maybe once a year or so. After my hockey practice with my company team yesterday, i was walking back to my apartment from my car in the snow. Head down, not really paying attention, when all of a sudden, "CRUNCH!" I quickly turn around and a car had been trying to parallel park and somehow hadn't seen this other car behind him and backed right into the driver side door on an angle, and scraped the shit out of it and put a mighty dent in the door aswell. Myself and another younger guy were right there, kind of looked at each other, muttered a few, "oh shit that sucks", but we both kind of stuck around to make sure the guy didn't take off or anything. The guy got out of his car, and had one of those looks on his face that says, "Why God? Why me? Why now?" He said to us, "don't worry guys i'll take care of it," and got back in his car to move it out of the middle of the street. I turned to the other guy who was lighting up a smoke and asked him if he was going to stick around a few minutes to make sure the guy didn't take off. He said he would, and i trudged back home.

So there you go, 2 things you don't often hear or see, in one day.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

how you didn't just roll that useless homeless cripple for his watch or ticket or however that stupid system works is beyond me. You're dead to me. Think of how much whiskey and smokes we could've had with that. Have you not learned anything from this cold, heartless, cruel, dog-eat-dog world? Sometimes I just want to piledrive you into a pile of shit and leave you to drown. God.

gritz said...

that's actually one of the greatest tories I've ever heard. That makes me really fucking happy. Good for the crip. Happy as hell for the guy

Anonymous said...

I think that is a sweet amazingly awwwwwwwwwww story! Like warm milk....
That sweet old man finally got his shooting star..... Kinda made me tear.... How excited he was..... Maybe it was the writter.... He kinda gives me the tingles in little places too!!
XO XO

gritz said...

Follow up: I just talked to him again this morning. He's picking up his money at 3:30 today. 6500 bucks. He also told the welfare office to fuck off. 211 bucks. I told him not to do that. To get his ass back in there and get that 211 bucks. He told me he didn't need it cause he was going to get his disability money soon and he'd be fine. I told him to get it anyways. You can't turn down 200 bucks! I asked him what he was going to do with the money. He said he was going to get an apartment, pay a few months rent straight up. I said that's a good idea, and i told him, don't be stupid and buy a car or something. He reminded me he was in a wheelchair and can't drive anyways. He told me he was going to buy a new electric wheelchair. Cause he said in the snow it's hard to get around with his cause he just keeps slipping. He said he tried to get up a curb for 45 minutes the day before and no one helped him out until the cops asked him what he was doing on the street. And he said "cause i can't get up this fuckin curb!" So hopefully this guy's luck has turned around. He was super happy and just kept chatting my ear off. Let's wish him luck.