a full plate

Last night I went to Rest Shelter with some friends. We spent time hanging out with homeless folk and then served them a dinner of broccoli beef, broccoli chicken, ham, short grain brown rice, burritos, sweet potatoes, roasted veggies, chicken casserole, penne with chicken and vegetables, rolls, three types of chips, beans and rice, and mac and cheese.

I was stuck with veggie duty, which made my big spoon the Most Often Rejected. "Come on," I found myself saying, "make your mom happy. Eat your vegetables."

Nothing doing when there is still mac and cheese to be had.

I ended up talking a while with G. When asked, I told him I was working on some writing projects. He wanted to see what I saw in the characters around him. After telling me his story, he pointed at various men around the room and ask me, "What about him? What's his story?" I responded to his questions with detailed descriptions of the men at the shelter, their lives, their roles in the community at the shelter.

"How you know that?" he asked when I pegged The Player, The Politician, The Scam Artist and The Dreamer among his friends. "Amazing! Come over hear and listen to this," he told a friend. "She a writer, and she KNOWS."

We laughed and joked until he turned to me, serious, and, with trepidation said, "What about me? Tell me who I am."

I was only making guesses, of course, based on quick observations. What I do KNOW now, after spending the evening with these guys, is a little more about the reach of Katrina in the homeless community, something new about life on the streets, a something else about conspiracy theories and mass murderers and, by proxy, the potential risk involved in standing between a room full of men and Kate Beckinsale on screen in Underworld.