A Fear of Homelessness

My first grade teacher, Mrs. Bauer, had strong feelings regarding the treatment of homeless people.

She was a tall, kind woman. We had just finished a unit on saving the wetlands. You could tell that Mrs. Bauer was the kind of person who really cared about this kind of stuff, and not just because you had to. Sometimes I imagined her at home in the evenings, worrying about the environment. I would picture her and her husband at the dinner table, discussing important issues.

"Mr. Bauer?" she would say.

"Yes, Mrs. Bauer?" Mr. Bauer would pause, a forkful of green beans suspended in midair.

"I've been worrying about the Great Blue Herons."

And so on.

Mrs. Bauer had me anxious on behalf of the herons, myself. I tended to take these things pretty seriously. After our unit on conserving electricity, I was vigilant about shutting the fridge as quickly as possible.

"Don't leave that door open!" I'd admonish my dad, innocently pouring himself a glass of milk. "You're killing salmon."

On this fateful day, however, we were not discussing the murder of fish or the endangerment of birds. Mrs. Bauer had turned to humanity. She was talking about how we should consider and treat the people around us in our little, second-grade lives. It was a major topic of hers. Since the beginning of the year, Mrs. Bauer had stressed the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you." She encouraged all of us to think about where another person is coming from, and to try to put ourselves in his or her shoes ("Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins," suggested reading: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech).

Mrs. Bauer was on a roll today. She asked us about homeless people. What we thought of them. How we thought most people treated them. I pictured this one guy who hung out on 23rd Street. My dad called him a "bum." I always held my dad's hand and went around the other side of him when we had to go past this guy on the way to Escape From New York Pizza. I would walk fast and try not to look at him and even hold my breath a little bit. I was wondering how and if he ever cleaned his beard when Mrs. Bauer really let it rip.

"The next time one of you sees a homeless person," she held all of us, hypnotized, in her gaze. "I want you to think--once, this person had a home. Once, they had a family, just like me. They are not so different from you or me. Who knows what has happened to them in their life. Any one of us could become homeless."

Anyone could become homeless.

Mrs. Bauer let this sink in. And sink it did. Anyone could become homeless. It didn't take me long to make the logical leap.

I could become homeless.

I thought about it on the walk home. I thought about it while I was doing my homework. I didn't think about it so much during dinner, because it was Chicken Divan and it was really good, but that night, brushing my teeth and climbing into bed, it came back to me.

Anyone could become homeless. I could become homeless.

I doubt that for my classmates this lesson was much of an event in their lives. But for the overly imaginative child, the child whose yuppie parents didn't allow her to watch television, the child who read too many romantic Black Stallion novels, well, it was another story. My eight year old self was ingrained with a fear of homelessness from this point on her life.

I believe that Mrs. Bauer's words stuck with me growing up. They encouraged me (or terrified me, as you would) to be a better student. I think it may be argued that an accute fear of homelessness may develop later in life to a larger fear of failure: of not getting the score on the test that would get the good grades that would earn the good internship that would secure the good job that would prevent, ultimately, homelessness. It all comes back to Mrs. Bauer.

I am not sure if my 8 year old self is as silly as she seems or wiser than us all. Not to wax Dickensian, but in a sense, after all, there's not so much that separates me, or any of us, from destitution. A few people in my life, but people are mortal. My health and my intelligence, my freedom from any major addictions, but these things too have been known to decline or fail. My good fortune. In the end, I think it mostly rides on that.

Work hard, my friends, and stay healthy. Anyone, after all, can become homeless.