The Perfect Foam

Why?

I am the first to admit that I haven’t always been as nice of a person as I should be and I will probably continue to fail in this regard in the future.  What I feel that I can say with a fair amount of certainty and confidence is that I don’t make it a point to be mean to others and I definitely don’t have cruel intentions.

I say this because last Friday after I had just gotten off the bus and was walking down the street to my office, I saw an act that I can best characterize as being mean and cruel.  There was a homeless man sleeping inside a cardboard box.  Picture a box about the width of a twin-sized mattress and long enough to cover the man, except for his feet.  Just as I noticed this, another guy was walking past the homeless man in the opposite direction as me and his first impulse was to kick the box as he walked past it.

Was the man in the box a strange site to see in downtown San Francisco?  Sure.  I was a little surprised myself.  While there are plenty of homeless people begging for money and food throughout the downtown area, this was the first time I had seen someone sleeping in a box, right outside of a store.

I have a tough time seeing homeless people in general- it’s a mix of feeling sorry for them and of feeling bad about everything that I have in comparison.  I have my moments of feeling sorry for myself, but two things I always try to remain aware of/thankful for are having enough food to eat and a bed to sleep in.  The last thing in the world I would ever do is to kick the box in which someone was sleeping.

It was disgusting to see this happen.  And even worse was the dirty, dry cackle that the guy let out as he walked by the box after kicking it.  What causes someone to do this?  A rough morning?  A rough life?  It would have been illuminating to be in his mind to witness the thought process involved, if there was any.  It’s a shame that there are people out there with nothing better to do with their time and such a lack of a moral code that they can do such a thing and actually laugh about it.

A part of me hopes that karma pays this guy a visit.