new year's flower man

So. I'm not quite sure what to do with this blog, now that the class I kept it for is over. And if my blog with the Pitt News finally gets off the ground this semester, I don't know how much time I'll have for it anyway, to research and write these posts. Honestly, what I might do is expand my scope a little bit so I'll have a deeper bag of tricks to pull from. I already sort of did this with the last post, which was not about food or health but rather eco-consciousness. But I think these things are all a little related: being concerned with the impact your lifestyle has on your body seems to go hand in hand with concern for your carbon footprint. (See: organics.)

Along that vein, it might be a little bit about money too, particularly gross overspending and overconsumption. And if I'm going to go with that, I'll share something I wrote last night, edited for context and public-sharingness.

January 1st

Driving back from my friend's house today, on 5th Avenue past Craig Street, I saw a man slumped in a folding chair on the sidewalk in front of PNC Bank, surrounded by white plastic containers filled with bunches of flowers. I couldn’t see his face for all the layers of coats and blankets, and if I hadn't seen him there almost every day, I might have not thought it was a person at all.

He is the token Craig Street flower guy, and I think I only noticed his presence today because it is New Year’s Day. As I sat at the light, I wondered why he wasn’t with family or friends, and became sad for him, sitting out in the cold snow trying to sell his flowers. I wanted to jump out of my car and buy a bunch, maybe to put in a vase on my kitchen table, but I had no cash and only 20 dollars in my checking so that stopped that. I somehow thought that if I could buy his flowers all at once, make his day out there worth it, he'd be able to go home. I began to wonder why he was out there, on the street, selling flowers, of all places. He obviously needed the money bad enough to come out on a holiday. He might not have a "real" job but he was out there, man. He wasn't taking no for an answer. He was under the scrutiny of all those passing eyes of people like me who usually saw him while going to class at a fancy university or to work in corporate cubicles on Craig Street. Despite all those clothes, he sat there naked, stripped of pride.

Although I didn’t think of it as I drove away, now I’m struck by the contrast of this man with another I encountered last night. My friend’s step dad had been complaining about how his work might call him in on the holiday, how we were to not answer the phone in case it was them. I knew he had gotten laid off earlier this year, so I didn’t ask what this new job was—although I think it might be for PennDot or something since he kept on talking about the snow and how the roads weren’t that bad and they’d only need so-and-so people. Whatever it was, his body language and disdain indicated that it was bad, that whatever he was doing was below him. He rolled his eyes at the phone when it rang (my friend's grandpa calling, not her step dad's mysterious employer) and tilted back his glass of whiskey, rubbing his belly full of the crab legs and shrimp cocktail and fondue that his wife had made for the occasion.

I wouldn't want to work on New Year's Eve or Day either. I'd rather sit inside and drink champagne and sleep in and go in the hot tub with my wife in the middle of the day because those are the things I have and I want the things I have. It's hard to give it up, even if you know you should, even if it's the difference between income and debt. Which is why I love the flower man and his little fold-up chair and mismatched bouquets. I want to sit cross-legged in front of him after I buy one and say "Teach me."