Cruel reality

September 9, 2014

I don't create the addresses for videos published at YouTube; YouTube does that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RjTUE4VaxBw

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IbhCAYmEMHk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1E0tNIIsyoM

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hNT971bF84E

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=83TawAYSCMg

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TeisCOH3vio


Last night, I had already decided what I was going to wear today, before I saw the Yahoo advertisement for Taylor Swift's magazine cover.  My other clean shirt is a white, button-down shirt, which I bought a few weeks ago so that I would have a formal
shirt to wear to interviews and whatever work I might be able to be hired to do.

At the shelter, you have to decide what you're going to wear the night before and take it upstairs to the dorm.  If you have a top bunk, you put your clothes for the next day in a garbage bag and keep it at your bunk.  That is because there are no corresponding lockers upstairs for the top bunks.  If you have a regular bed, you put your clothes for the next day in the locker that corresponds with your bed.

I was not about to have a flurry of indecision about what I was going to wear today, half an hour before the curfew last night.  Also, the only other clean shirt I have is the white one, which, as all shirts like that do, creates a "v" at the neck.

Guests can't do laundry at On The Rise on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I am permanently barred from Rosie's Place and The Women's Lunch Place.  When I have had more money, I have sometimes done my laundry at laundromats; I have to save money for things like apartment application fees and have to depend on the places where I can do my laundry for free.  Also, I live out of a locker; all of the clothing that I regularly wear has to fit in the locker; there is nowhere for me to conveniently store more clothes than about a week's worth, wearing the same few pairs of pants every week.

Homeless people without lockers suffer a lot; you can't leave your things at overnight shelters during the day if you don't have a locker, so you have to take everything with you and carry it around all day.


Copyright L. Kochman, September 9, 2014 @ 8:13 a.m./additions @ 8:21 a.m.