Writer at Globe and Mail pretends to be panhandler in Yorkville.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/wtiff2007blog
$32 and change
Jen Gerson, 09/09/07 at 2:37 PM EDT
It's the first drizzly, cold day in fall and my task is to sit on a street corner and beg for change. I'll assume I'm paying back some karmic debt for missing my mother's birthday.
I went to Tim Horton's and asked for my usual -- a medium steeped tea double double with milk, double-cupped please. I pulled on my torn jeans, inkk-stained green hoodie, favourite hat and dark eye make up and hit the streets with a folded cardboard sign and a thin black felt pen. On the northeast corner of Bay and Bloor, the nexus of wealth and fame during fest, I met Gordon Lackey, 56. Armed with a Grade 10 education and a heart problem that had thrown him out of manual labour, Lackey now hits Yorkville on the weekend. His usual haunt near King and Bay is deserted on Sunday.
"And people have money up here," he said.
I hit him up for tips.
"You just have to be respectful," he advised. He knows some panhandlers who steal wheelchairs and canes from the hospital and he hates that. Just be polite.
"I know you're not going to do this forever," he said and offered to help me out if a nearby aggressive panhandler in a red hat gave me any trouble.
"I know him," he said.
So I took my piece of cardboard and sat under the eave of David's shoes, on the same side of the street as Holt Renfrew. On my sign I wrote: "Out of Job. Running Short. Will write for change. $.25 per word. (Cheap!)" Which isn't entirely untrue. I took Lackey's advice, was polite, smiled and didn't harass anyone. Within a few moments, people were dropping change into my cup: A man wearing a wooden cross with a heart punched out of the middle; a celebrity-stalking journalist in an orange shawl; a former colleague whose son gave me a loonie.
I expected to be ignored as a panhandler. I was wrong. People look, they just look away when you make eye contact. But the position offers a great vantage for people watching. It's hard not to notice the celebrity stalkers. Well-coiffed and usually women, they walk around the block, collecting a Starbucks cup, or a bag from Holts along the way.
Liv Tyler and Danny Glover walked past. They didn't give me any money.
A clean-cut man wearing glasses walked up to me. He had a blue collared sweater over a collared shirt. He was carrying a full-length umbrella, and a black leather clipboard holding a perfect, folded newspaper.
"You want a job?" he asked.
"Sure. I charge a quarter a word. I'm a burgeoning literary talent. What can I write for you?"
"You want to work?" he asked again.
"Absolutely."
"There's a Tim Horton's down the street. I'm sure if you approach them, they'll take you on the spot."
Before I could explain to him that I actually had a job, and could I please have the spelling of his first and last name, he spun around and strode away, his gait just an inch or two taller than it was before.
Apparently, all the money in the world can't buy you a pair.
A security guard who witnessed the incident offered me a cigarette and a loonie. I thanked him.
Another man in a dark suit approached me a few minutes afterward. He pulled out a silver clip with a thwack of folded American twenties.
"What are you short on?" he asked.
"Actually, I'm a writer. I charge $.25 a word. Cheap."
"I'm a writer too," he said and handed me a twenty.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Jen."
"I'm Paul Haggis."
"Nice to meet you."
Which means that the Canadian and Oscar-winning director is either a genuinely kind person, or that he has a damn astute publicist.
After about two hours on the street, I took my twenty and my $12 in change and gave it to Lackey. He emptied the cup into his hand and said that I'd done not too bad. He paid for two coffees at the Timmy's under the Bloor cinema, where most of the films for the fest are playing. He said on a good day, he can make approximately $50, and told me about the time he ran into Ringo Starr.
"I know you, I said. He gave me a $50 bill and he looked like a street person. He had a shirt out to here. He stayed and talked with me for about ten minutes," Lackey said.
Sometimes you get lucky. Life is like that. One minute you're getting told off by a random person on the street, the next, Paul Haggis is paying for lunch.
Lackey's joints are swelling up again and he says he doesn't expect to make it to Christmas. He's okay with it. He offered two more pieces of advice to me. The first was to be kind to my mother: "The day she dies will be the saddest day of your life. She's your best friend."
The other: "Stay young."
