Street Level

There are some extraordinarily lucky people living in Kamloops.

I won’t name them because they know who they are and, except for those few who dared to actually put their names to recent letters to the editor, the rest are wise to not be recognized for what they are.

These people are lucky because, first, they have the ability to read minds.

They simply know that all beggars asking for money want it to buy drugs or booze.

I wish I was as prescient as they are.

They are lucky because they know what each and every one of their days will bring them.

No, that’s not the result of the aforementioned incredible psychic ability — it’s because they know they’ll get up in their own home.

They’ll go into their own kitchen. They’ll open their own cupboards and fridge and take out all the fixings for their own breakfast.

Then they’ll choose from the many clothes in their own closet and they’ll get dressed.

Maybe they’ll get into their own car, or use some of their spare change to take a bus.

Odds are they’ll go to their own job, or to their own classes.

They’ll do work that no doubt they grumble about, but it’s meaningful, it contributes to society and, in the end, they’ll be paid for it.

Maybe after work they’ll take in a movie, or just go home, pop open a beer and veg out in front of the television.

Perhaps they’ll hit the pub with some friends and express their opinions — because they have that right — that we should just put all the homeless and marginalized on a train and ship them off somewhere.

Close down the soup kitchens and thrift stores.

Heck, let’s turn the mission, hostel and House of Ruth into B&Bs while we’re at it.

Forget about providing methadone to help drug addicts. Let’s just let them wait until our RCMP finally routs out every drug dealer in town.

Anyone care to tell me when that might actually happen?

While we’re at it, why don’t we just round up all the beggars, put them in a bus and ship them out of town?

Not in my backyard is a good philosophy, right?

These people are lucky for so many more reasons.

They’re lucky they’ve never been so far down that they didn’t think they could sink much lower, only to discover there was someone even further down, dragging them into their own pit to use and abuse them.

They’re lucky they have the mental capacity to handle the hurdles life may throw at them, something those with mental illness, and others who have been told all their life they’re nothing more than crap, will never have.

They’re lucky they had families who cared about them, even if those families had to use “tough love” to do so.

There’s a word in that phrase these folks seem to have either ignored or forgotten the meaning of: love.

Tough love is when you’ve tried absolutely everything else and, because you love that person who is stuck in a quagmire, you have to do the kinds of things that hurt you to the core, because your love for that person is greater than the agony your actions cause you.

They’re lucky because, no doubt, they have found others who share their opinions and who will slap them on the back, cheer on their rhetoric and go home believing they, too, are right because, heck, their best buddy says things they wish they had the guts to say as well.

They’re lucky because, in this country, they have the right to express such uneducated drivel and the rest of us must defend their right to spout out reckneck beliefs that quite simply have no place in today’s society.

Yes, they’re lucky people.

They’ve got everything — except the ability to read the minds of anyone other than beggars.

Too bad.

If they could, they’d know how truly lucky they are.

Posted by Dale at 10:22 a.m. Comments