She embraces and understands the riff raff, the misfits, the undesirable and disreputable.
Whether she’s worked as a teacher, a social worker, or the church secretary, she has always had the ability to get on their level. In fact I think she prefers it there. You might say, she is riff raff, a misfit, an undesirable and disreputable; at least at heart!
She can convince someone looped out on drugs to go home, even offering them a ride.
She can understand the plight of the suicidal; talking them out of it and encouraging them to deal with the root of the problem.
And she’s always had a special place in her heart, for the violent and angry whom she feels just needed a break and never got it.
She can convince a raging sobbing drunk to go to bed, and a rebellious teenager skipping school, to try and give school another shot; a bigger effort.
She tries to understand them. She listens to them. She feels for them. She’ll probably pray for them.
It used to scare me.
When she’d pick up a sad and scruffy hitch-hiker, stinking of last nights booze.
When she pulled in to an abandoned warehouse in down town Boston with over 20 homeless men staring at us. As they puffed their cigarettes and joints and what have you, she asked them for directions.
When an old friend of hers was running from the police and came to our door and slept on our couch.
And when another old hippy friend came by wanting to party like the old days.
It turned out that…
The hitch hiker had been rolled at a party and his heart was breaking from the termination of a long relationship.
Her cousin was one of those within the abandoned warehouse in Boston whom soon after moved home and straightened his life out.
Her friend on the couch, she fed and warmed him up by the stove, then talked to him all hours of the night, until he decided the following morning to fess up to his crime and he and Mah called the police together.
And her old hippy friend, his wife had cancer, and he wanted to relive the old times; forget his current problems.
As the years have gone by, throughout all of these situations and events, I have gotten to know the riff raff, the misfits, the undesirables and disreputable, and having done so I’ve come to find that, riff raff and misfit, undesirable and disreputable, are not fair characterizations.
Instead they are often seeking an understanding soul, a compassionate word, and an ounce of hope. A non-judgemental gesture that isn’t riddled with self-righteousness.
She gives that to them; her fellow misfits.
Starlit Simon 