I AM OMELETTE!

“I am homeless! You must help me!” The speaker's voice was heavily accented, and the speaker was a little round woman named Kami who hails from Egypt. But when she says “I am homeless!” her accent causes it to come out as “I am omelette!”

“I got a ticket, and I cannot pay it! I will lose my car!” Kami laments.

“So, sell your car,” I told Kami one day. “Then you can pay your ticket!”

“But I need my car! I must keep my car! But if I do not pay, I will go to jail!”

“Well, you'll have a free bed, free showers and free food! That's not so bad, is it?”

“You are mean! You are so very mean! I will not speak to you again!”

But, of course, Kami speaks to me again. My customary greeting when I run into Kami is to say: “Hello, Kami, how miserable is your day?”

I always thought homeless people would be the dregs... little did I know that when I became homeless, I'd engage in some amazing intellectual conversation.

Take the man I like to call “The Messiah.” The Messiah knows exactly what the future has in store for all of us. There's going to be a war that starts in Cyprus, and Colon Powell will become president, and the world is going to fall apart. It's all predicted by Nostradamus. The Messiah has a master's degree in something or other and considers his oratory skill to be second to none. Others might disagree even as their eyes glaze over in the overzealous glory of The Messiah's riveting orations...

Often you may find him at where the homeless are or in the library pestering the odd Librarian who owes it to him to bask in his intellectual splendor.  He'll charm her with tales of the book he has up on amazon.com concerning how the Anti-Christ is actually the Warlock in the employ of the President of Iran. He has a composite sketch to prove it! His book was supposed to sell millions of copies and get him out of being homeless... maybe it still will...

Kerry will tell you she's on her way to meet Barak Obama, and is going to solve the homeless problem in one shot and get back her job at the CIA... right after they take the brain implants out of her head that (recently retired) Police Chief Sweeney ordered installed...

Small and energetic, Kerry has a special place in my heart. She makes no bones about her desire to jump mine... can't tell you how thrilling that is! She'll come into Tommie's Cafe, plop down right next to me and put on this huge grin and just giggle. It's cute and creepy at the same time.

The most fun I've had with gossip is that which Judy has started about herself. First, she's got a girlfriend named Jamie... but, she tells people, she decided she was going to cheat on Jamie with Mrs. C. Then Jamie and Mrs. C were cheating on Judy together. Then Judy and Jamie cheated on Mrs. C... oh, and the latest? Judy seduced Mr. C, but Jamie got to him after and now Jamie and Mrs. C are sitting on the sidelines watching in shock and horror... Needless to say, Mr. and Mrs. C are not at all happy about these rumours, but Mrs. C decided to make the best of it by explaining to everyone who asks how the story got started in the first place. Mr. and Mrs. C have donated a lot to the homeless, by the way... time, money, effort, and I'm sure they consider Judy's tales of woe a special blessing...

My all time favourite amongst the homeless, however, is Todd. Todd has a special place in a lot of people's hearts (especially the very same Mrs. C... I think she has a crush on him!). Todd is a bear of a man with red hair and often sports a remarkably well kept red beard.  Having a conversation with him is... well, it's more like having five or six conversations at once, as, keeping him on the same subject for more than one or two sentences is next to impossible...

Last year, Todd got his hands on a 35” TV.  One of those big, heavy, old fashioned CRTs. He had it plugged in outside the multi-service centre on Pacific and set up camp there. You could walk by and see him watching television every night for weeks. Finally someone got fed up and booted him out... but he was there, I dunno, a month?

He'd been known to carry everything around with him everywhere. I've heard tales of him digging green bread out of his bags and refusing to throw it away. Never saw that, but I do believe it.

What I did see one day, on a weekend at First Presbyterian Church on the steps to the old sanctuary, Todd had everything scattered all over that porch. Yes, this is the same 1st Pres on 4th and L street where a whole lot of Livermorons got baptised (including me!). On this particular day it was hosting the Warming Centre (what we homeless types call the Livermore Homeless Refuge). I was working as a driver at the time and was going to have to get up very early (as in 4am) the next day. It was about 9:30 when I was leaving, and found this disaster on that porch.

I have to admit, I lost it with Todd. I told him if he didn't get the mess cleaned up immediately I'd throw it all away. We did argue about it, but he got most of his mess cleaned up.... not all of it, however, and I ended up walking a whole lot of his stuff to the trash cans in Carnegie Park.

I caught some grief for that. But I wasn't about to watch Todd desecrate that Church. Sorry!

Todd and I have since made up, I think... maybe... but I don't see much of him anymore. Not sure how he's doing. Judy and Kerry are still roaming around.

Kami has managed to get out of being homeless by taking advantage of some of the many, many, many services available to women. I still see her come to the Library and I'll always ask her. “How Miserable is your day, today, Kami?”

I did exactly that the last time I saw her. Her response was unexpected.

“It is horrible, go and sit down and I shall tell you everything!” she tells me to my horror as she waddles by, then turns to me with this huge grin on her face. “I must torture you today. I have not done so in a while!”

On that day I was omelette...