The Life of a Scarecrow

I was standing in line with my documents for DSS, having had and still having the luxury of gathering the required pages by car and thus the effort took a day, without a car it would have been a good 2-3 days. Sitting in my car I started grouping the xeroxes into what I needed to present. I could and can write a brief essay/narrative on such things but put together a bunch of documents that my brain sees as completely unrelated and I quickly get confused.

I had a few weeks gone over the narrative, and gone over it again: where I'd be going, what I'd be getting, etc. Nothing confuses me more than paperwork as the part of my brain that was injured: if it's not a story my brain doesn't know what to do with it and starts firing off data like hail mary passes. But I'd done it, I'd put all the pieces together, organized them and though I remembered the date as 10 rather than 20 - and yes I reread the form several times but when it comes to numbers. I don't know something happens somewhere in my scarecrow head.







I stood waiting in a line that isn't forty people long anymore, federal stimulus money applied to make the system not only newly renovated but technologically more efficient.







The man had been ahead of me and I was hearing the dialogue that was taking place between a woman for DSS, certainly behind bullet proof glass and a man. Nothing startling about the man- a T'shirt, jean shorts and worn shoes.







"I don't have a day off again until next Thursday," the man explained.







"There's nothing I can do," said the DSS employee not at all harshly but wearing the fact that she really couldn't do anything or at least the system couldn't. The exchange went back and forth until the embarrassing admitance.







"I don't have any food, I don't have any money- I am starving," he said.







The woman behind me tapped my back- it was my turn, I hadn't noticed but wondered did he know where the food kitchens, does he know which churches have pantries - I b-lined to the empty window not wanting to hold up the line. My documenst were scanned, I was done and turned around hoping the man would still be there.







I went outside, walked to the bus terminal but there was no sign of him. I'd noted the chinese restraurant across the street and had hoped I'd find him at the bus stop. But no.







I remember when that man was me and I may be him again. I hadn't known I could even get foodstamps, no one had explained to this person with a brain injury what to do, who to contact, how the system works, how to access help- not HASCI, or Family Services or any of the churches I'd contacted over the years. So I sold every bit of gold I possessed for a few weeks.







Now yes- the man may drink, he may be a drug addict on the other hand he may have been and be someone like me who didn't make those choices. To be poor is to live in the bull's eye for me I got two notices today:



1) If I'd only received a notice less than a week earlier, mere days



2) The other a phone message perhaps telling me that even though the rent is paid and will be paid I may be have to move again.







Why I don't make enough money to live where I live that'll be arrow 1



Arrow 2 will be unemployement, I'd saved my looking for work sheet for over three months since I had been on unemployment- a full business quarter. I culled paper work last week and now that form is in a landfill. What will be interesting is if I just have to seel my car and pay the state of South Carolina a couple grand or if I now get to experience jail as well.