Starving Criminal

So most would agree that panhandling is a crime, and I agree with them..because it is. But when you are down on your luck, you do what you have to do. I personally haven't panhandled in a long time, besides the once or twice I ran out of gas and had no money...I didnt see anything wrong with asking the guy at the next pump for a few spare dollars.

But there was a time in my life when I lived on panhandling and I lived for it. I got to be so good at it that I would take bets from people at how long it would take me to come up with any amount they name. Now before you get your panties in a bunch and start throwing names and accusations around, I never once panhandled when I didn't actually NEED the money. I was in no way a lazy bum. I was about 18 the first time I ever panhandled, my daughter was about a year old and my husband and I had become homeless and all we had was our 72 Cutless Supreme and the highway.

We traveled the state of Florida trying to find a place to belong. But there was only one problem....we had no money. I still remember the first time, we were in Jacksonville. We had about 75 cents to our name, we were out of gas, hadnt ate in 36 hours, and we had used our last WIC check for formula. My husband pulled into a Wal-mart parkinglot and parked. We sat there looking at eachother for over 10 minutes trying to combine our thoughts on what we should do.

Without a word, my husband jumped out of the car and walked up to the first person he saw coming out of the store. He talked to them for a mear 30 secs and walked back to the car smiling. He leaned into my window and handed me a $20 bill. I was in shock. I asked him how he got it ( I thought for sure he somehow robbed the guy he was talking to), but he said that he told the guy the truth, and he gave him the money.

Now, when you are flat on your face broke, $20 is alot of money. But it wasnt enough, where were we going to sleep? So we spent about 2 hours in that parking lot asking total strangers for help and by 6pm we had over $100!

I was so happy, but still felt so much shame for what we had to do. Like some may think, we didn't run off to the nearest ghetto and buy a crack rock or run to the liquor store...we went to Wendy's and had a nice meal, bought some diapers and formula, pumped $10 in the tank and headed to the nearest motel. We were set! Well at least for the moment.

We spent hours everyday for over a week at that walmart begging for money so we could survive, and after useless attempts to find a job with no real address or permanent phone number we knew that it was time we were on our way.

We lived like this for over 2 months, different towns & different stores. We came familiar with the best way to approach people, the ones that for sure would call the cops, the ones that would give the most and which stores had the biggest fish.

I am in no way proud of what we did but you know what, I am not ashamed. The money we got from the contribution of others was spent wisely, we weren't taking advantage of people or lying to them..we were surviving.