A Procrastinatory Friday Fiver

Entitled "Broken":

1. What's the last thing you broke?
Much to my chagrin, the heel of my right black boot snapped half-way through its first day of wear yesterday. I tried to hold my head up high and wobble with grace as I walked back from school with one leg 1 1/2 inches shorter than the other. Rest assured Sears will be receiving a complaint from me.

2. What's the most expensive thing you've broken?
I recently broke the post off one of my pearl earrings but I'm pretty sure the glue just went kaput. Other than that I'm drawing a blank although I'm sure my parents will be able to contribute 18 years' worth of expensive break memories next time I talk to them.

3. Do you consider yourself clumsy or graceful?
Extremely clumsy. I think I've blogged before about my disappointment at realizing I'm not exactly the picture of grace I once believed myself to be. I run in to walls and tables, slip, and fall quite often.

4. How much money do you have in your wallet right now?
I have potential money in the form of my check book and credit cards. I carry zero cash (which is extrememly inconvenient) and for some reason my well-worn debit card is sitting in my locker at school in the left pocket of my clinic coat. I'm losing my mind.

5. Someone asks for change while you're walking down the street -- what do you do?
I usually give change or a dollar bill if I have it. If not, I say I'm sorry and that I don't have any. It's a constant struggle for me between the idea of not giving money because it contributes to an addiction/disrupts systemic efforts to help the homeless and my visceral reaction to a person with so much less than me in so many ways. A long time ago Josh heard a motivational speaker who was once homeless say that the most painful part about panhandling was having people walk past him as if he hadn't even spoken, something we would never do to a person in a business suit, for example. To dehumanize a person in such a way, regardless of whether I'm empowering an addiction or not (which I will never know, for that matter), is something I have trouble doing. Nobody wants to be asking strangers for change on the street; it must be very humiliating to do so.

xoxox