"Yo're a n'artist?"

Whenever I'm in the States, my parents get pretty freaked out about the fact that I don't think much of walking around my neighborhood after dark (it's a pretty safe neighborhood, not a sketchy part of suburbia at all). They also make sure to tell me at least once a semester not to go to outside ATM machines, walk around by myself off-campus, ride public transportation after 7pm, etc.
And while I realize that, for a girl in the good ol' US of A, these are right and necessary rules, as a person who has spent most of my life in European suburbs and the occasional city, I find the concept of basically being confined to my house after dark pretty weird, and not a little restrictive- especially when it starts getting dark around 5 in the winter.
Yesterday after class, two of my friends and I took a trip down into town a little ways, to a more counter-cultural part of the city. There are small shops there, a pizza parlor or two, some junk shops, and very interesting people (think like, tattoos any and everywhere, people randomly performing spoken word, or playing instruments, or selling jewellery on a sheet they've spread out on the street). Close by, about a 3-4 block's walk, there is a more traditionally american shopping center with big chains like Petsmart, Best Buy, etc- including a Target. The goal of our trip was the Target; just a routine sort of grocery/battery run.
It was late-ish in the day, probably around 5 or 6 by the time we arrived, and the sun was setting beautifully. There were some lovely purple flowers growing right on the edge of the sidewalk, next to the road, so what with the light being so perfect and all, I decided to take a picture. As I was finishing up my photos, a raggedy looking man in his 40-50's came to stand behind us, eyeing my bag and what I was doing. He had shoulder-length white hair, a worn, wrinkly face, and his left eye-lid was stretched over the socket, so it almost looked like he was half-squinting, half-winking at you all the time. When I stood up, he asked me if I was an artist. I said yes. He then proceeded to tell us (almost unintelligibly) about some amazing graffitti nearby in which the artist had apparently predicted the fall of the twin towers, in 2011. (Go figure). After that, he shook our hands, told us something about having been in the Vietnam war and losing his eye, told us he was hungry, and asked if we would buy him some food- we could even come watch him eat it if we wanted. One of my friends, the more gutsy of the three of us, told him no, she only had a gift card for Target, and he would have to ask elsewhere. She told me later that the time it took her to see the scars on his arms was the time it took her to move her "sharp object" (aka, her pocketknife) from her backpack to her pocket.

Finally, we managed to get away from him, went and did our shopping, and came back out to the bus stop to wait for our ride home. By this time it was dark, so we stood in a lighted, open area, and waited. For some reason, my other friend (we'll call her the tall one) said she felt like that old man was probably going to show up again. Sure enough, we hadn't been standing there ten minutes before he came around again.
He did a strange little song and dance, which none of us recognized, as we watched him warily. Then he asked us for money for a bus fare. I offered him instead some saltine crackers that I had bought for myself at the store (it was a grocery run, after all), to which he replied:
"Naow, yong lady. Will sal-teen crackers help me git on th'bus?"
I was flummoxed, and not a little irritated. I replied no, but since he had been asking for food earlier, I had thought it would be reasonable to offer. To which he said that he now had food, and wanted to get on the bus. At which point I said, sorry, I only had my permanent pass, and I needed that myself. I could tell that he was making an effort to contain himself and be civil, so he said "I unnerstan'." To which I said we'd see him around, and (and this part was the most horrifying to me) slowly blew me a kiss with his knotted, knarled fingers and creaky old lips and said, you never knew when you'd see him next, and walked off.

Now, I am all for treating people with respect and kindness, no matter what their station in life. A person is a person, after all, and deserves to be treated as such. At the same time, I don't know how to be around the kind of person I've described above. As a follower of Christ, how does He expect me to act toward this sector of his creation? I don't know. What I do know is, that it'll be a long time and it'll take a large group of people before I return to that part of town after dark.
(And what cheek!! The cheek of that old man! hmph. If he were truly hungry, he would've at least taken the crackers.)
over 'n out.
E.O.