Random Acts of Un-kindness

The weirdest thing happened today. As I'm walking down the street, nowhere near our apartment, I notice that up ahead of me there are two HUGs slumped against a building, in a drunken stupor. In the other direction, walking towards me, was this woman. She was eyeing the HUGs in a weird way, and just as she passes them she pauses, reaches between them and picks up a beer can that was on the ground. I know better than to stop, so I keep walking, but I have this feeling that that wasn't the end of it, so I take a quick look back. The woman had stopped and was berating the HUGs. I take off my headphones to listen to what's going on and I can hear her telling them how disgusting they are, how they're evil and are going to hell, how they need to get off their drunken asses and get jobs, and so on. I walk away chuckling because I think to myself, this would never happen in the US, everything is so PC there, who yells at HUGs in this way? The closest I've seen to this was on the subway in Manhattan when this woman starts yelling at this guy that she thought had just peed in a corner, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't even a HUG.

Fast forward several hours later. I'm on my way home and decide to stop by the grocery store near the apartment. And guess who is sitting outside the grocery store with a sign begging for money? The woman who was yelling at the HUGs. How random is that? Maybe she was pissed because they were giving beggars a bad rep? I have no idea. I was tempted to give her some money in exchange for her telling me why she yelled at them. But I barely had enough money to buy Lee's alcohol and you know how cranky he gets without his bourbon.

Remind me to tell you later about the African man whom I have seen begging on four different streets in completely random parts of Paris.