My guess would be that they thought you were going to rape/stab/kill/maim them. Many people who are homeless not only suffer from mental illness, and so are not thinking clearly, but also come from a home situation where abuse is the norm, and so their level of trust of strangers is pretty low.
Personally, I always carry extra fruit and if someone enquires I give it to them. I recall seeing a documentary shot here in town following 4 homeless people - one of the men was schizophrenic and would literally only eat sugary food - coke, candy, etc - he had no teeth left, so a subway sandwich or granola bar would be a rather cruel enticement for him. An orange, on the other hand, can at least be sucked for the juice.
Anyhow - give or don’t give - but getting pissed off at someone who is at a lower place in their life than you’ll every be, if your lucky, because they aren’t suitably grateful, just seems like an exercise in futility.
Inigo, your post makes the most sense to me. It’s not condemning, or trying to say that those of us who try to give are “self righteous”. I’ll be frank: I just don’t understand. I’m from a small town with many poor people, but no homeless. I’ve never seen a homeless person in my life until I moved here to Seattle. It’s all new to me, and I don’t always know how to react. I want to help, so I do what I know. I do what my world does. Your explanation makes it easier to understand that they do not always see what I see.
My money will go instead to charities that help the homeles. I didn’t need the thanks to be uttered for me to give, but when someone’s reaction is “fuck you, this isn’t enough!” when it’s all I had, it’s a little intimidating for a small town, middle class girl like myself, who has never seen real poverty. My world is different, and my world has changed dramatically. But I’ve never been homeless. Thank you, Inigo, for helping me fight my own ignorance. Because I’m not self righteous, and I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. I simply didn’t understand.
I used to attend Mass at the Cathedral in downtown Nashville, and we’d have several homeless folks hit us up before and after Mass. Catholic guilt - it’s a wonderful thing. The priests asked that people buy McDonald gift certificates and give those instead. For people who are really hungry, they can buy food. For those who are scamming, they’ll go elsewhere, because that’s not what they want to receive. It seemed to work pretty well.
I also occassionally served at a local parish’s soup kitchen. Most of the people were very grateful for the food, but some were obviously not able to express gratitude, or feel it. But that didn’t make their need any less. For that matter, the homeless peoples’ dogs didn’t verbalize their gratitude for the scraps we saved for them, but we fed them, too.
Yeah… I can see the possibility now that mental illness or other extreme circumstances might render someone incapable of expressing gratitude.
I guess that’s just extremely difficult for me to comprehend. I just can’t think that way. If I was begging and desperate for something and somebody went out of their way to give it to me, It would be very hard for me not to feel grateful.
In any case, I gave the granola bar to my rats, and the look they gave me conveyed far more gratefulness than what was expressed by the guy on the bench.
Funny, I think every grocery store I’ve ever seen has a free water fountain in it. Usually right toward the front, often near the rest rooms. If he just wanted some water, he could have gone inside and drunk some from the fountain.
But it’s obvious that he had some mental issues that prevented him from seeing this solution.
I can totally understand your POV in your post, but I do need to take issue with the above statement. I gave him what he was asking for completely out of charity and nothing else. Not to feel self-righteous, or better than him, or whatever. I have just over $20 to last me for the next week and a half and I have trouble affording rent, let alone food. I really don’t have the extra to spare but I got him the water because I saw a need that was greater than mine and wanted to help in the small way I could. I didn’t give him money b/c I had already done what I could for him at that point and couldn’t afford any more.
Personnally, I wouldn’t swear it. Maybe at the beginning (but actually I suspect I would feel more shame than gratitude). But after months, maybe years of being homeless? I might come to perceive this help as “business as usual” or maybe hate all these fucking morons who have such an easy life and expect me to crawl at their feet in gratitude just because they handed me a piece of fruit.
Once again, I think it’s way too easy to state “If I were in such or such extreme circumstance, I would…show gratitude/take arms/rescue the child/whatever”. Some posters on this board have been homeless. The others, IMO , have no clue about what they’d actually do if they were.