POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_GUILT

Quite a few times a day I feel little wisps of guilt about things I probably shouldn’t feel guilty about but I do.

I feel guilty every time I pass the panhandler who often stands in front of the Ace Supermarket on Seventh Avenue at Berkeley. He always looks at me so expectantly. That’s probably because I once gave him $10 dollars.

He pissed me off, though. About an hour later he hit me up for more money.
"I just gave you $10 dollars," I said. "That’s right. Excuse me. Sorry,
miss."

I read an article about him once in Stay Free Magazine and found out that he needs $20 dollars a day to pay for his room in a flop house somewhere in Brooklyn. He’s got a handsome face; a winning smile. I feel guilty every time I don’t give him some money. But I also want to disabuse him of the idea that I’m good for $10 dollars.

I feel guilty every time I walk past the coffee cart on Eighth Avenue at Lincoln Place holding a cup of coffee from Cousin John’s. He’s such a nice man and when I do buy coffee he always jokes: "You want it for here or to go?" I laugh and say, "I’ll take it at the cafe table over there pointing to the sidewalk.

Sometimes I cross the street diagonally so that he won’t see me. If I walk right by his truck, I try to hide my coffee under my coat.

I also feel bad not buying the New York Times from the nice man who stands on the corner near the coffee cart selling papers to the morning rush hour crowd. "I mostly read the Times on the Internet," I think guiltily. Sometimes I have to stop myself from blurting that out loud – revealing my patent disrespect for printed matter.

During Pledge Week on WNYC, I feel guilty the longer I put off actually making a pledge to my favorite radio station. Especially when they say stuff like "$100 dollars is what you might spend on a trip to the grocery, or a meal at a good restaurant." WNYC is on in our house practically all day – from Morning Edition to the BBC after 9 p.m. It really does make a qualitative difference in our lives. It is our main source of news and media entertainment. Yet, I always procastinate, waiting until near the end of the pledge drive to actually call in

Similarly, I feel guilty every time I pass the Candy Sale sign in front of PS 321 knowing that I missed  the deadline for orders. As one of the biggest PTA fundraisers, it brings a lot of money and programs into the school. Still, I was unable to motivate myself to find anything in there worth buying. Actually, I did make a list of things like magazines subsciptions and wrapping paper that seemed okay. But the order sheet is still in a pile of papers in the dining room.

Guilt is such an overused word. Is it guilt that I am feeling or just a kind of discomfort about these things. The word guilt is from the old English word: gylt, which means crime. In dictionary.com it is described as: "culpability for a crime or lesser breach of regulations that carries a legal penalty." It’s not a crime to walk past the panhandler, buy the kind of coffee I like, read the Times’ on the Internet, procrastinate about making a contribution to WNYC, or decide to ignore the Candy Sale. it’s more like a self-reproach; I feel bad but not bad enough to do it differently.

Tomorrow I am going to buy my coffee where I want to. I will walk without guilt past the coffee man. If he wants my business, he’s going to have to use a better brand of coffe. And that’s final. 

14 thoughts on “POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_GUILT”

  1. I find it interesting that, to judge from your post, you primarily feel guilt for not giving people money. No white lies told to a loved one? Things borrowed and not returned? Calls not returned? Sex acts performed against your religious beliefs?

  2. “The really insane bum is the one who is usually on either Garfield or Carroll on 7th. The old white man with the glasses who seems so helpless! I know someone knows what im talking about? He owns a brownstone on Garfield between 7th & 8th and hes still begging!”
    Yeah I know that guy. Laid a nice anti-semetic rant on me and a friend one time, but it wouldn’t have been sporting to kick the tar out of a senior citizen. I keep hoping he’ll croak of natural causes, although I doubt it very much – that Starbucks has been better than an ATM for him.

  3. This whole “white guilt” thing pisses me off. I am poor and white. I live on the border of Park Slope (4th Ave.), and I live here because I want to reside someplace relatively safe and with some amenities, somewhere where I will NOT be harrassed for being “Whitey.”
    People say to move to a non-white community if you want cheap rent. Bullshit – in those neighborhoods I only encounter anger at my assumed privilege. White does not equal rich, and we are all entitled to a decent place to live without being accused of ruining a neighborhood because of our skin color. The truly elite are ignorant of this and could probalby never understand.

  4. I donate to various groups throughout the year. I don’t feel obliged to had money out to strangers on the street. You can at least have the comfort of knowing it went to a good cause and not someone’s crack pipe. You also invite yourself to get robbed if someone sees what you have in your wallet.

  5. What on earth is “fake real-estate-broker” Park Slope? Is that the part of Park Slope where the crack dens/hookers/gang bangers were pushed out by working people who spent their hard earned money to fix up their homes so they could have a nice place to raise a family?
    Its so easy to blame the rich/white (you seem to think they are interchangeable) people of Park Slope for all the inequity of the world. How come no one seems to think the renaissance going on in Harlem – led by middle and upper class blacks – is a bad thing? What racism!

  6. I used to live on Berkeley Place. That guy in front of Ace got me Blunts and Beer from age 13 until about 17(at that point the guys in ace stopped caring). The really insane bum is the one who is usually on either Garfield or Carroll on 7th. The old white man with the glasses who seems so helpless! I know someone knows what im talking about? He owns a brownstone on Garfield between 7th & 8th and hes still begging!

  7. Ah…white upper-middle-class guilt. Or perhaps guilt is an overused word, maybe it’s just white-upper-middle class discomfort. I’d like to know, do you live in “real” Park Slope or “fake real-estate-broker” Park Slope? I ask because one has been white and upper middle class as long as it’s been around, and the other used to be a thriving lower middle class minority neighborhood.
    Furthering the trend towards ethnic and class homogenity that’s destroying the character of what used to be a thriving multi-cultural metropolis, now that’s something to feel guilty about.

  8. Wait, I’m confused famdoc – is guilt a waste of energy or is it something that if found lacking, requires some serious soul-searching? Although personally ravaged by it often in a particular day, I think guilt is gross, unpleasant, often baseless and yet sometimes a useful moral indicator, when it steers us to the direction we need to be going.

  9. dont feel guilty about not buying candy from 321. the parents group there is awash in cash.. maybe we should all feel guilty about not helping the other, less-affluent schools in the neighborhood raise funds.

  10. It seems to me that guilt is such a waste of energy. If you can’t walk from Grand Army Plaza to Third St. without feeling guilty three times, then some serious soul-searching is in order. There are at least three panhandlers on Seventh Ave. on any given day…one by Ace, one by Met and one by the Korean fruitstand. I am certain, from having read your diary, that you do plenty of good deeds in your life. You needn’t support every panhandler, newspaper vendor and coffee seller in your neighborhood. You have plenty of neighbors who fill in them missing pieces in your benevolence.

  11. I used to walk by the guy that sells the newspaper near the coffee cart on Lincoln Place too. He was always so nice and said hello. When I took the paper, instead of my wife, I also felt guilty about not buying from him He also works in a bagel store in Brooklyn Heights – I was taking a trip to the Brooklyn Promenade and happened to run into him. I imagine he has at least one other job too. I changed jobs and now take the R train from Union & 4th Ave. I kind of miss him.
    BTW – the StayFree link now goes to the Stay Free feminine hygiene product site!

Comments are closed.