5 Days: Day 5 - 'Lesson Learned

Well, 5 Days is complete and I’m back at home now. I’m getting that feeling you get after a massive trip where returning home just doesn’t seem right, yet you naturally fall back into your old routine. I slept in. I had a dance party all morning. I ate old pizza and peanut butter & jam sandwiches for lunch and then forgot to eat supper. I procrastinated doing homework. Everything is back to normal.

And that’s ok. I learnt a lot doing 5Days. I don’t know if anything physical needs to change in my life, but I do hope that some of the perspectives I gained permanently stick. After a wonderfully long shower/cleaning routine on Friday night I sat down and wrote out some of my observations from the week. I’m sure I’ll have more in the weeks to come, but here are 20 so far:

1.     First, I have some people I need to thank specifically: Ashley, Brittney, and Kayla for supplying me daily with food and encouragement; Sarah, Lacey, Sara, and Erin for stopping by and allowing me to have an outlet for all my words; and Mel (I don’t know who you are but your words meant a lot), Aimee, and Kerry for their encouragement online. As I mentioned in my previous blog, words of support literally got me through the day.

2.     I didn’t really miss any of my electronics. After I got home I listened to the entire ‘Sigh No More’ album of Mumford and Sons because I had been deprived (see dance party noted above), but other than that I was fine. Oddly, the only time I missed my cellphone was when I couldn’t use it as a defense mechanism. Whenever conversations got awkward or I had nothing to contribute, I couldn’t whip out my cellphone to fake text people. Sad, but true. Future Michael should note that Cellphoneless Michael still survived said awkward situations.

3.     In fact, not having a cellphone was kind of fun. It was like my friends were on a treasure hunt and I was the treasure (This is a quote from my friend, not me.) It was a legitimately exciting surprise whenever I saw one of my friends because I never saw it coming. That being said, I’m not sure this would be as effective if I wasn’t stuck to a certain location every hour of every day, but hey, it was fun for the time.

4.     Men suck. When you have literally thousands of people walking by you each day, you begin to spot the ones who are more likely to give you money. Hint: It wasn’t men. I would say that 8/10 people who were complete jerks to me were guys. Perhaps it’s because I’m a guy—I’ll have to consult with the girl beggars to see if they had better luck—but all I know is that by the last day I basically gave up on asking most guys. Guys, let’s remedy this.

5.     All week we had more than enough food. So much so that Woods Homes came by daily to collect it. People love giving things that have a bit more thought put into it. And, as I mentioned before, free food with no chance of repayment is the best tasting food out there. As a team, our communal eating got to the point that we would share half eaten cookies and sandwiches. You eat till you’re full then you give the rest to someone else. That is definitely something I am going to miss. (Kinda makes me want to reconsider Acts 4:32-35.)

6.     Planning 5 Days for the Homeless during Roll Up the Rim is brilliant. It’s easy to give up something that wasn’t yours to begin with. (Insert Biblical lesson here about how all of what we have isn’t ours to begin with.) At the beginning, I said that if I won the car I would donate it to the cause. Everyone looked at me with genuinely shocked expressions. I took it back. I’ll keep the car, cause I do need a car, but I would pawn the 3D TV and give it all to 5Days. Who the heck needs a 3D TV anyway? Spoiler: I didn’t win.

7.     People are antagonistic purely for the sake of being antagonistic. With 5 Days we had our bases covered.

a.     Homeless people are homeless because of drugs and alcohol. It’s for homeless youth, who are more victims than offenders.

b.     How much of the money is actually going to the kids? 100%.

c.      Isn’t this just a short term solution? Woods Homes works with getting the kids jobs, homes, and life skills.

d.     Aren’t you not addressing the problem? Woods Homes also does family counseling programs to attempt to prevent kids from needing their shelter.

I got all of these questions, which is fair, but when people ran out of

legitimate ones, they just started making them up:

e.     Excuse me sir, do you have any change? No, do you?? Umm, yes, but it’s going to the homeless.

f.      Excuse me sir, do you have any change? Did you even donate?? No, I don’t really care about this cause; I’m just living in the box for kicks.

g.     Excuse me ma’am, do you have any change? You’re not suffering enough. The group last year was suffering more so I’m not going to give to you this year.

h.     Excuse me ma’am, do you have any change? No, because I don’t like how you’re trying to shove your right-wing Christian agenda on the kids.

i.       Excuse me sir, do you have any change?  *Throws penny at my head* Get a job!

j.       Excuse me sir, do you have any change? KONY 2012 is a scam. SERIOUSLY?!?

8.     Little children are awesome. The one day having a kid come up and drop a coin in my can pretty much made my entire day. In the same light, it hurt so much when a kid tried to walk up to me and her mother grabbed her away and held her close as she walked away. This happened to me two times in a row and both times the mothers went well out of their way to avoid me and any eye contact. The innocence and curiosity of a child is such a blessing, and rejection stings that much more when someone wants to give, but someone else is holding them back. 

9.     Words and smiles are huge. For a while I changed my sign to, “All I want is a smile and eye contact!” I want to go back and thank every single person that took two seconds to genuinely interact with me. If I see them in the hallways over the next couple of weeks, I will.

 

10. Ostracized bonds are strong. I connected closer with my team in 5 days than I have with most people in months, purely because a) well, let’s be serious, we were in living in a tiny box together but also b) we could relate to each other’s feelings of rejection.

11. One thing that I will definitely miss is the freedom I had to talk to strangers. A couple of times I just stopped to talk to people, without the intention of asking them for money. Not only was being homeless a great conversation starter, but (most) people weren’t weirded out by me approaching them because they knew I was part of a program. I got to enter rooms and buildings that I never would have normally entered—including the elusive Women’s Center, which I have avoided like the plague my whole University career. I was free to wander and nobody asked questions, and I will miss that.

12. The story of the penny from the widow comes to mind. When I asked profs for money, I couldn’t help but feel slightly turned off by their cheesy smiles as they oh-so-generously handed me 50 cents. Then in the same light, I had students come up and hand me $40 and run off before I could even say thanks. That being said, we did have one prof who donated $500 himself, so I certainly can’t lump them all together.

13. I actually got to know the caretakers, janitors, and bus drivers around school because I saw them on a bi-daily basis. I regret not talking to them sooner.

14. My most missed commodity was not my laptop, not my cellphone, not even my shower, but my electric blanket. Even if I end up giving away everything that I own, I will cling to that thing and never let go.

15. People said to be creative with my signs, so I printed off a bunch of memes and taped them together. If you don't know what memes are you can just go ahead and skip all of the following pictures:

16. I lied. I did miss my iPod, purely for the reason of getting songs out of my head. Our dear coordinator Alisha had an affinity for busting out songs like “Get Low” on a bi-hourly basis. It’s really hard to be polite and humble when this song is running through your head.

17. Windburn is a serious thing. Who knew? I used to think that my eyes always hurt because I was looking at a computer screen for too long. Then, when I went without a computer for some time, they still hurt. Turns out, it’s just windburn from living in Lethbridge. I need to invest in some good goggles. (But actually. If you’re a boarder and have old goggles, let me know.)

18. I’m ashamed that it took me until Thursday to pray about reaching our total. I had been willing to commit myself physically, mentally, psychologically, and emotionally to this cause, but I was scared to commit to it spiritually. Thankfully, a friend put this in perspective for me.

19. We have not yet reached our goal. I say ‘yet’ because technically, the site is still open for donations until the end of this week, because there is still a lot of coordinating that needs to be done. Regardless, this has been a hard thing for me to come to terms with. That being said, I cannot forget that what we did raise was incredible. Five people raised over $10,000 in five days, mostly from the pocket change of university students. Some of the other schools doing it had multiple sponsors and campuses with more than double our population, and we raised more than them. People would often say, “I only have pennies” and I’d tell them I wanted their pennies; we averaged $17 in pennies a day. That doesn’t sound like much, but it stands as a testament of how a normal person can lose four pennies without blinking an eye, yet when you add them together it amounts to something awesome. I’m proud of what we accomplished. 

(This would be an opportune time to note that you—or a friend, or a rich uncle, or your business—can still donate at 5days.ca until Friday! We had a couple of businesses tell us they would throw together a ‘casual day’ fund and donate the proceeds to us. I appreciate the creativity and know that every bit helps.)

20. My final point is to come. I did a lot of creative writing while being homeless and *fingers crossed* hopefully I’ll have the final product soon. Keep me accountable on this.

So there’s a quick rundown of what I learnt. Like I said, this list probably won’t be complete for quite some time, but it’s a start. Also, if you’ll notice I have proudly crossed ‘Participate in 5 Days’ off my life list on the side. Ch-check!