A Little Story

I've been itching to tell this story for awhile now because it seems to me such a Washington story (it's nothing to do with running into someone who is "famous for Washington"-it's the opposite of that-but it's very Washington in it's own way). I live in Adams-Morgan and I work in Dupont Circle-I used to walk down 18Th Street to get to work until a weird guy started hitting on me, so after that I decided to walk down 19th Street-it's much more residential. it's quieter and I get to see a lot of cute dogs in the dog park. I also walk by a grade school (I still don't know its name, I know that's sad). So last summer there was a homeless woman who seemed to be camping out in a corner of the schoolyard. It's not a big schoolyard-maybe 15 feet deep although it's probably 100 wide or so and it slopes down to the sidewalk on a reasonably steep inclines-there's no way to easily sit flat on it unless you went to one of the upper corners-and that's where the large, African-American homeless woman seemed to be living. I saw her almost everyday, both morning and evening and she didn't seem to be hurting anyone although she clearly had mental problems, as evidenced by the incessant mumbling and a tendency to pull her pants down and pee every once in awhile-at which point I had to avert my eyes. I wasn't looking anyway, but she seemed to make a point of it whenever someone walked by. Anyway, I felt sorry for the poor, crazy homeless person who lived in the schoolyard. So, one day I was walking to work and I saw the homeless woman sleeping in the schoolyard-she was hard to miss being rather large in a relatively small schoolyard. She woke up and saw me (from a distance of 200 feet or more)at which point she went to a corner of the schoolyard (still well within my eyesight) and pulled down her pants to go to the bathroom. This had happened to me before, both with her and once in New York (on a very crowded street on a very cold afternoon-it was surreal) so I averted my eyes as quickly as possible and just will myself to walk past her as fast as I could. Unfortunately, the khakis and blue-shirted guy across the street who clearly had paid a lot of money for his clothes, condo and car. was grossly offended by the her. I personally felt sorry for her and the fact that there were no kids around made it, if not okay, then not as bad as it could have been. But blue-shirt guy had to start screaming at her "What the fuck are you going? Get the fuck out of here!" I thought it was pretty clear what was going on and if there's one thing I've learned it's that you DON'T engage with crazy homeless people-it's always a mistake. Which he found out because she started screaming back at him. I don't know if he thought she would just go away or say "yes, sir" and stop or what-but she (of course) screamed "Fuck you! Fuck you! Get the fuck away from me!". And I, of course, was caught in the crossfire right as these two were screaming at each other. All I could think was that it was way too early (being around 7:45) to listen to these two yelling at each other and couldn't upper-middle class guy leave the poor homeless woman alone? I left them screaming at each other and did not see her on my return trip home. If he called city government on her perhaps she got some help. I'd like to think so, anyway.