Respect

by Dennis G. Allard

It's Christmas, 1992. I spent Christmas eve with my brothers and parents and then stayed over night at my parents and spent today with them out in the Valley. I worked a little bit with my Dad on his computer. We have a project we're doing together whereby he will design the hardware and I the software to make a board which fits into a PC. The board won't necessarily do anything interesting other than maybe input sound and output some voltage level under program control. It's just an exercise so that we understand how to build a card which works on a PC, generates interrupts, accepts data over an ISA i/o bus, performs DMA, and whatnot. Also, I really want to get my Dad more into programming. He is a master hardware designer, but still is stuck in using Basic as his primary model of how computers are programmed. He is interested in graphics, the kind which is used to create animation of swans and things like that. So I also want to help him understand how that is done enough so that he may program such things himself. That is a goal I have.

I got home tonight, went over and fed Rick's cats and sat outside on his patio with one of the cats for awhile. Cats need a little company on Christmas too. On my way back home, I decided to stop by Main Street video and rent Excalibur, a film by John Boorman about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. An appropriate Christmas viewing experience and an improvement to my alternative plan which was to do some work on my PC. After I parked, a woman walked up to me and asked me for some money. I had seen her on the street before and had felt for her. But sometimes I'm not in the mood to give money to street people and this was such a time. So I turned her down. I wasn't too bothered by it, having grown somewhat crass by the deluge of street people which Ronald Reagan and the American public who voted him into power (that probably means you) have created. But, as crass as I've become, I am less crass than most of the people with whom I've worked over the last eight years of my life. But I'll get to that later.

They had already rented out their only copy of Excalibur so I decided to just go home and work on my PC doing one arcane project or another.

As I backed out in my car, a gigantic '72 Dodge Polaris which Don Voreck sold to me recently for $100, one of three automobiles which I own, I noticed that the woman was still there.

I saw her approach another man in the parking lot of the video store to ask for money. I was observing her from the street as she walked away from where I was toward the man. Even though I could only see her from behind, I could see the pleading way in which she approached him, hoping for some small handout. Maybe it was the way she bent her head to one side as she asked him. Maybe the tone of her voice. Maybe it was her bare feet which she was arching as she walked on the cold pavement. Maybe it was because she reminded me of someone I once knew.

It was cold outside, for Christ sake.

I drove home. I was bothered. I cried. This person did not deserve this. Where I have worked for eight years there are empty heated offices staffed by overpaid researchers and a plethora of fancy machines wasting incredible numbers of cycles to make up for poor programming architectures. But I'll get to that later too.

What was important was this woman and her male friend who was sitting a ways down the sidewalk, also hoping she would obtain some money from someone. She was someone I've seen on the street before. I couldn't just leave her without helping. I put a ten dollar bill into my pocket, got on my bicycle, and pedaled back down to Main Street Video. She wasn't there. So I rode a ways down toward Pico and then back up towards central Main Street. Where would they be? Where could they be on such a cold night? I pedaled slowly, enjoying being on a bicycle in the harsh air. I had a flannel shirt on, just enough to appreciate the warmth of my apartment three blocks up the hill. Very few establishments were open. None, really, on this Christmas evening. They had probably been at the video store because it was one of the few places where any people would be to get help from.

Then I saw them. They were at the corner where the Oar House is, crossing the street. I rode up to her. I stopped and held out the ten dollar bill. She looked at me and thanked me. Then she noticed it was ten dollars. She almost cried and asked me if she could hug me. She was sincere and articulate. I hugged her and genuinely wanted to hug her. She needed one and so did I. She told me how people had been calling her a whore and how she needed to get some food and help her friend because he had some problems with fleas and was hungry.

He asked me if I knew if Lucky was open. I told them it might be but I wasn't sure. She said she felt like going home and getting some sleep. As if they now had a little security and could relish it and 'go home' and start tomorrow anew. This moment was a brief moment where she had some respect. I was giving her respect and she was proud to accept it. That's what money does when it's not in excess. That's what jobs do. I am glad she had that respect in that moment.