Unplanned encounters in Harvard Square

[xela]

I was on my way to an appointment downtown today when the Red Line went down — initially we were told a stuck train at Park, and we would be transferred to shuttle buses at Kendall; then there was another train stalled at Central, and we were told to get off at Harvard. By the time we got to Harvard, it was time for my appointment, so I called and was able to reschedule for tomorrow. Called my sweetheart to figure out when and where we were meeting for dinner. And there I was, in Harvard Square with two hours to kill.

An artifact of where I lived when I first moved here is that my bank is the Harvard Square branch of a small regional bank. The realities of the 21^st Century banking mean I almost never actually go into my branch, but here I was, with a check in my wallet I'd been carrying around for a week or so, and less cash in my wallet than I like to carry. At the teller window, I remembered something I've been meaning to do for years.

When I was in the hospital after my stroke, I was trying to arrange to buy a car with an automatic transmission, since it was going to be many months, if ever, before I could safely use a clutch again. I found a good possibility online, had my friend Ken take it for a test drive and a mechanic's evaluation, and agreed on a price with the seller, all from my hospital bed. The catch was that the sellers wanted a cashier's check. I called my bank. No, you have to go into the branch in person to get a cashier's check. My checkbook was, of course, at home, and I had no idea where at home, so writing a friend a check and asking them to go to the bank, cash it, and buy a cashier's check was a... plan that had issues. I called my bank back and asked to speak to a bank officer. Ended up with my branch manager, Helen, who I had never met. Explained my situation on the phone without a lot of hope, and she, bless her, decided to bend the rules and issue the cashier's check out of my funds on hand. Without even the normal fee. It was a little kindness, a little insertion of humanity into business — the kind of thing you hope for when you do business with a small bank, but not really the kind of thing you expect. I've been meaning to stop in, introduce myself, an thank her ever since.

So I turned around, went to the back of the bank, and asked to see her. People apparently don't ask for the branch manager by name very often (or, more likely, people the receptionist in her fifties hasn't seen before don't do so much), but she went back and a few minutes later Helen stepped away from her desk to meet me. I explained my business reason for wanting to see her, we sat and talked for a few minutes. I felt good to finally say thank you; I hope she felt good to be thanked.

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Now I'm sitting in the au bon pain, writing this, and watching George, a homeless man I was friends with, after a fashion, when I had cancer. The mental effects that had on me were weird; one of them was that it made me a lot less aware of social niceties. The outdoor seating area in front of ABP was my livingroom in those days, and it never occurred to me that there was anything inappropriate in being friends with a homeless man who also made it his livingroom. At least, not until one day I happened to be walking with a Harvard undergrad I knew when we ran into George. I introduced them, exchanged a few pleasantries, and moved on.

"Are you out of your mind? You just introduced me to a homeless guy. With my full name!" She was clearly horrified, and I totally failed to understand why.

Now my neurochemistry is no longer screwed up and I do have fairly normal social boundaries, and I'm sitting here watching George wander around the area — picking up trash and throwing it away, moving a broken piece of furniture — a trip hazard where it was — aside, and turning it over so the sharp bits are facing the ground. This man, whom I once, when I was unbalanced, thought of as a friend A force for order against entropy — as he always was.

Can any of us claim a higher calling? Yet here I am, averting my gaze when he glances my way, hoping he doesn't recognize me. And feeling like a heel about it.

Comments

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

I guess I often avoid interacting with homeless people because I (1) want to avoid being asked for money (2) want to minimize encounters with someone who is unpredictable and possibly violent (3) am repelled by poor hygiene. But if those possibilities are things you are either willing to deal with or not worried about in this particular case, then I guess there's no particular reason not to be friendly with this guy?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

I think a big part of my response to seeing George is rooted in there but for the grace of god go I. Life has thrown some pretty severe tests at me, and the fact that none of them has yet turned me into a homeless man with haunted eyes and no lifeline back to the normal world does not strike me as an especially good reason to believe that no future test will. So I suppose in part my avoidance is in part a sort of superstitious fear of contagion.

[cfox.livejournal.com]

Would George be the same guy who started the usual "how old is the baby?" conversation, then went on to tell me about Cy Young's given first name being Denton, right about there?

I guess knowledge of baseball trivia is hardly identifying, but it's unusual for me to meet a stranger outgoing enough to get through my usual "leave me alone" field.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

That seems unlikely. I don't recall him ever approaching a stranger in any but the most deferential way, and have never seen him panhandle. Though I don't recall right off ever seeing him around small children, and losing his wife and or child is certainly high on the list of things I've imagined may have happened in his past to make him the way he is.¹ If so, I can imagine that he might become a very different guy around small children.

And George is certainly capable of becoming quite geeky and animated, and I suspect he's of that generation where nearly all American boys were mad for baseball. His main topic is local and especially Harvard history, though I've heard him take off on other topics that suggest he once had a very good liberal arts education. (He claims to be descended from one of the great Harvard families, which I of course take with a grain of salt — OTOH, he has survived for at least 17 years as an apparently homeless guy in Harvard Square, so he must have some resources.)

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¹ Admittedly, I may be predisposed to think of that possibility because losing his first wife and second child in childbirth so nearly destroyed my father.