I live downtown, and I work across the Willamette River. I take the MAX train when I don’t bike. Mornings are uninvolved commutes. Evenings, warmer ones in particular, are another story.
The story is solicitation. There’s this pattern, you see. It goes like this:
First off when I board the train is the meth head de jour. A single shaggy guy lurches through the train holding out a cardboard box with an assortment of candy. The candy looks as if forcible wresting was involved at some point. The meth head wants to sell the candy, although no price is advertised. The pitch usually goes no further than “Candy?” It’s always just one guy. It’s always a guy, and it’s never the same guy. I’d swear, though, that it’s the same cardboard box and the same candy.
Empirically enthused, I tried one day to transact a candy purchase. I held out a dollar and pointed to a wrinkled bag of peanut M&Ms. “How much?” I asked. The guy jerked up his head and stared my general direction. He then backed away, his lower lip twitching, without saying anything. The train stopped, and he dashed off. “Whatever,” said the girl sitting next to me.
The candymethmen always get off the train just before it crosses the river to downtown. The petitioners, in season, replace them. These are folks hired to collect signatures for ballot measures. They’ve thinned out now that the most recent election has passed, but they still appear. “Registered voter?” they growl. They usually have petitions for several ballot measures. They have some words they can say about each one (if asked). None of the words actually inform.
The petitioners seems to consider only the first four stops on the downtown side profitable turf, perhaps because the trains get too crowded thereafter. It’s among those crowds that the next solicitor gets to work. A guy (again, always a guy) loudly announces that he’s got to get in touch with his friend/father and can he use someone’s cell phone. Inevitably someone offers up a phone. The guy then launches into a dramatic “conversation” after punching more than 10 digits. I expect to read any day about the workings of the “can-I-use-your-cell-phone” scam. Fortunately, they leave me alone, so I guess the “I’m Blind And No You Can’t Use My Cell Phone” sign I wear works.
As the train moves into downtown, it passes the block of sedentary street kids with hand-lettered cardboard signs and puppies. The signs usually express different needs that can be gratified by donations of some sort. Money, of course, is the usual object, but others occur: “I need a bong hit” or “My puppy needs food; I need beer” or, my recent favorite,“I need a kiss and won’t give you harpies.”
I get off the train at the end of our so-called “Fareless Square” (I’m not particularly cheap; that’s just my stop.) At the corner of 10th and Morrison I run into the “got a minute” canvassers. These are pairs of impossibly enthusiastic college-age youths hugging clipboards. They want your credit card number or at least a name and email address. Sensitive I may be to the issues, I'm not inclined to give out personal financial information to strangers on the street, so I resolve to dispatch their entreaties, ah, efficiently. I see canvassers scanning the detraining citizens, ready to pounce on the guilt-ridden. I apparently fit some demographic. They go right for me:
“Got a minute for the environment?” (no)
“Got a minute for the ACLU?” (no)
“Got a minute for equal rights for gays and lesbians (no, actually)
“Got a minute for endangered Mexican sea turtle eggs?” (huh)
“Got a minute for a starving refugee child in Darfur?” (oh, for Pete’s sake!)
There’s only so much turf available for the canvassers to work, so the pairs spread out along 10th Avenue and on across the next street. As this is my walking route home, I’m lucky to have to dodge only one pair a day. My personal best is three. That means that three times I’ve announced to impossibly enthusiastic youths that I don’t care about their worthy enthusiasms. I tell myself I shouldn’t feel bad not giving perfect strangers my name, email address, and credit card number, but the guilt trip works. The last four blocks home my head hangs in shame.
All pitches, you see, eventually connect.
© Geoffrey Wren 2008
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