With his hair askew and his nervous gyrations, Richie can be a frightening sight.

Sunday, February 26, 2023

“With his hair askew and his nervous gyrations, Richie can be a frightening sight.”

We’ve known “Richie” for two years. He is in his mid-twenties. We’ve never seen any indication that he is an alcoholic and have no idea if he takes drugs. However, there’s little doubt that Richie has some serious mental health challenges. Some days Richie is relatively lucid, other times he is tormented by “demons.” Richie survives by panhandling. He stands at “his” traffic light with plastic cup in hand and walks the line of drivers that are waiting for the light to turn green. As we watched from a distance, the vast majority of people keep their windows rolled up and stare straight ahead. We make no judgements. With his hair askew and his nervous gyrations, Richie can be a frightening sight. Occasionally, someone will roll their window down a crack and drop something in Richie’s cup. A small coffee at Dunkin costs $1.59. A coffee and a breakfast sandwich is $3+. Panhandling is a tough way to survive. When we approach Richie’s intersection, we sound our horn and blink our headlights. Seeing us, he immediately abandons his post and runs toward us. We always pull into an adjacent parking lot, so we don’t block traffic while we visit with Richie. Regardless of his state of mind, Richie is always delighted to see us. Today was not one of Richie’s better days. Running toward us, out of breath, he exclaims, “These nasty people keep coming out of me…I don’t know what they’re doing in me. I don’t like them in me.” All the time he’s talking, Richie is bouncing from one foot to the other. He intermixes his remarks about “demons” with, “I love you guys. Thank you for talking to me and helping me.” We ask Richie where he grew up and whether he liked school as a kid. He chatters on; the conversation seems to distract and calm him.

We give Richie our packet of $10, a Dunkin card and our prayer card and tell him that we pray for him. “I pray too,” he tells us. “I ask God to help me so these people won’t be in me.” As we drive away, we think, “He’s someone’s son, someone’s grandson.”

“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Matthew 25:40