Beggars Can’t Be Choosers--but Their Givers Can Be

When a stranger walking on Hollywood Boulevard approached me recently and asked for money to make a phone call, I dug into my pocket and gave him a quarter. Then I felt a tug at my sleeve.

“Daddy, you shared your money,” my young son observed.

My son was doing more than stating a fact. Surprise was evident in his voice.

Since I had spent a lot of time advising him to share his toys with other children at the playground, his surprise at my sharing with a stranger indicated a suspicion that perhaps his father did not always take his own advice.

It was enough to get me thinking about the way I deal with strangers who are bold enough to ask me to share.

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t encounter several, because where I work, in the Los Angeles Civic Center, there are several beggars to the block.

People who work with me have developed beggar strategies.

I have one friend who gives to anyone who asks because, he says with a smile, they are holy men. I know others who give only to those who look needy and don’t ask. Still others give to selected regulars, treating them almost like pets. Some give to the able-bodied. Some to the lame. Some give when they are in a good mood, others in the expectation that giving will put them into a good mood. Still others give to no one at all.

Some get angry. I was behind a woman the other day when she snapped at a beggar, “Why don’t you get a job?”

I expressed anger once. A regular had asked me for a quarter and I had told him no . He pursued me, saying that he’d get one from me tomorrow, and I informed him coldly that he was wrong. He would not get one from me tomorrow. In fact, I said, he would never get one from me.

But mostly, when I feel angry, I just walk on past. It is difficult to take pride in telling off a beggar.

I rationalize that I could give away my whole paycheck and still not make much of a dent in the lives of all the beggars I see. There are too many. And how do I know which ones are deserving? Who will blow it on booze? Who will really get something to eat with it? What business is it of mine? For a lousy quarter, do I expect a say in someone’s life? Anyway, I have my own problems.

Beggars are intrusive. To the beggar it may not look like I’m busy, but I am. I’m thinking. When a beggar comes up to me, I have to think about him. And I am in an instant moral dilemma. To give or not to give.

For those I pass every day there is no great problem. My policy is cut and dried: not to give. I say to myself that I do not want to encourage begging. But there is another reason. I resent them. They put me in touch with the essence of liberal guilt: Their presense makes me feel guilty for being so much better off.

There’s the man, for instance, who resides in a doorway that I pass going to and from work. Technically he is not a beggar, for he never asks for money in so many words. But his presence does. I know people who flip him a quarter every day.

There is one advantage in giving to him. You can see how he spends his money. Often the wrappers from a take-out breakfast or lunch are spread around him on the sidewalk that doubles as his living and dining rooms. Sometimes he just uses the sidewalk as his plate. After dark he packs up and is gone.

Then there is his sad counterpart who sits on the steps of a courthouse a couple of blocks away with his hand outstretched and a few coins scattered on the steps to give people the idea that others have found him an appropriate recipient.

It is easiest for me to pass by the young man who seems to consider himself a showman and regularly calls out, “How about a quarter, professionals?” to the well-dressed on their way to become well-fed at lunch.

The sad truth is, there are so many beggars that we can afford to be choosy. I prefer my beggars moderately enterprising, with a straightforward approach--an outstretched palm and a simple message such as, “Hey buddy, can you spare some change?” On balance, I am more likely to give to someone young rather than old, to women rather than men, and to beggars near where I live rather than to beggars near where I work. I don’t know why that is. Perhaps I am influenced by the greater sense of community that I feel when closer to home.

I remember the one time that I tried begging. I was 12. It was the day President Kennedy announced that he was throwing a naval blockade around Cuba. Newspaper headlines had made everybody jittery and in a hurry to get home. I had been visiting a friend, and realized that I needed a dime to catch a bus. But I was an incompetent beggar. My pleas for bus fare got no one’s attention. I gave up and walked.

I know that most of the beggars I encounter today are far more competent than I was--probably because they are a lot more desperate.

But I can’t help but think that some of them don’t need to be out there.

It may just be that they’ve forgotten how to walk.