During lunch I broke my long standing policy of not giving money to the miscellaneous human debris that walk among us in the CBD. After giving him my dollar (and after he scurried away to buy his Mad Dog) I thought about what made him so different:

1. He had a non-offensive Odor | Although he didn’t smell bad, he smelled like something. I don’t know what that something was but something is better than bad. Something didn’t make me want to jump in front of a bus to escape it’s scent.
2. He had a prop | He launched into the usual mumbo jumbo about how he’s not homeless, he’s just collecting money for charity name. This time he was collecting money for battered women. Lightly battered, like tempura. He had a brown box with a hole kicked in on top that had “battred woman” scrawled on the least filthy side with a sharpie. must have chopped her up to put her in the box and that displayed determination. A+ for effort.
3. He stuttered | We stutterers must stick together. What can I say, he had me at h-h-he-he-he-hello.
4. He opened with a joke | When he walked up to me, I was drinking the last of my diet coke and he said “Go’d Damn! Dat drinks gosta make you colder than al’ready is! which lowered my defenses and made me smile in his direction. This created eye contact which everyone knows is the homeless’ version of the Death Star’s tractor beam. If he had made me laugh I would have probably given him my car keys.