2. I've given money to a bum who wanted to legally change his name to Skunk.
True. When I lived in DC and worked at the Bertucci’s at 2000 Penn., there was a homeless man that would meet me at the Foggy Bottom station and follow me the two blocks to work every morning. A friend once bought a sandwich for a man outside the grocery store. The friend would nightly buy his dinner at the store, and the man began “stalking” him, demanding a sandwich every night. If you help someone out once, you’d better plan on doing every time you see them, or you need to alter your route.
Such was the case with Skunk. I was riding the escalator up one morning and made eye contact with him. He stepped in front of me at the end, with no attention of letting me by until I gave him something. I handed over a dollar. Every morning, Skunk would watch for me. If I told him I didn’t have any money, he would accompany me to work while telling me how he was just trying to save up enough money to get his name legally changed to Skunk.
Some mornings, I watch him from below, waiting for him to accost some other commuter, and when the moment was right, I would sprint up the escalator and across the street. Eventually, I quit my job for a brief period to become an art salesman (but that is a story for another day), and when that didn’t pan out, I returned to Bertucci’s. I never saw Skunk again. Perhaps he finally saved enough to fulfill his dreams.
