SURFING SOAPBOX:Hungry for the holidays

Days have passed into weeks, and I still cannot shake this feeling I have. Is it the holiday bug? I have heard of something like that; I think it comes with all the Christmas cheer. Maybe for some it’s a lonely time of year.

For the lucky ones, it’s about family and friends. Christmas lights and trees and the exchanging of gifts. For others, however, there remains a stark contrast between the lucky and the so-unlucky. This feeling I have has nothing to do with the Christmas blues or worrying about not getting the present I want most — because in reality I have everything I need.

No, this feeling I have is about a man I saw downtown two weeks ago sitting right next to Santa’s house among the backdrop of Christmas decorations.

He is an older man, I would imagine in his late 50s to early 60s, a street person I have come to know for the last six or seven years.

I asked him how he was, and he looked at me for a moment with this big blank expression on his face and said, “I am hungry.”

At the moment in which he spoke those words, I thought he was going to begin crying, and I said in a rather matter-of-fact way, “Why are you hungry?”

To which he replied, “Because my disability check has not been deposited yet, and it’s late.”

He then offered to sell me the gold chain that he wore for good luck around his neck instead of taking a handout.

I asked him when was the last time he had eaten, and he said two days ago.

Here he was, sitting on the corner of Glenneyre Street and Forest Avenue in downtown Laguna Beach — starving.

To me, there is something wrong with this, and the debate about whether or not this is his own doing can wait for another time.

I don’t believe that any man or woman deserves to starve during Christmastime or at any time of the year.

I’m not exactly sure what I am trying to get at here, other than to share this feeling I have sometimes, when our town is up in arms over saving the Third Street shacks or in an argument over a new statue or parking permits, that maybe we should see if some of this money could be spent in better ways.

Such as providing street people with a place to go for shelter and a hot meal. But maybe this already exists.

I just know that walking away that day I counted my blessings, and it reminded me of what the spirit of Christmas is all about, and that is giving to anyone — family or friend — and in my case to an almost-stranger.

Peace.