Sir
It was a cold weekday morning. I was walking toward the coffee shop when I heard a voice calling me from across the street. I wasn't being called by name. Rather, someone was hailing me as “Sir.”
I looked toward the voice and saw a woman crossing the street, walking toward me. She was of indeterminate age, with a smashed face, dressed in mostly pink, and clearly of the streets. What struck me first about her appearance was they way she wore her orange kids' tennis shoes: no laces and tongues sticking straight up.
She asked me if I knew where she could get something to eat. I told her there weren't any shelters or food banks in the neighborhood. She asked me I knew about a street ministry and mentioned its name. I said I did and volunteered there. They served cold breakfast and a hot lunch every weekday.
I spent the next five minutes explaining how she could get there by bus. She seemed to understand and then not understand. I went over the process several times.
She didn't have any money for bus fare so I fished out my wallet and came out with my smallest denomination—ten bucks. She took it, and said, “Thank you, Sir.”
When I walked home from the coffee shop a half an our later, she wasn't around.