the world's not an inn and there isn't any room for you

(current music :: DJ Food)
Yesterday on my way home from XDU, I stopped at Kroger to pick up a somewhat random selection of consumer products. On my way back to the car, I heard someone calling to me. Not me, personally, but me in a "hey, you over there" kinda way. So I look up, and there's this guy rolling towards me in a wheelchair. He comes up and asks if he can ask me a question without bugging the hell out of me (those may have been his exact words, in fact). I tell him to go ahead and he says that he's a disabled veteran and that he's "on a goddamn drunk." He might have said he was a goddamn drunk, but I think he said he was on a drunk. And then something about how he wasn't going to lie to me and he started to go on but at that point I handed him a dollar. He seemed surprised. And then we went our separate ways.
You could argue (go ahead, I won't stop you) that what he needed was not cash so he could go buy another 40, or other weapon-of-choice. What he needed was an effective social safety net. But, I can't provide that. Especially not standing in a Kroger parking lot. And, more to the point, that wasn't what he asked for. What he wanted was money. Frankly, probably the last thing he wanted was for me (implicitly or explicitly) to be telling him what he should want out of our transaction (food, shelter, the phone number for AA, whatever). So I gave him what he asked for. Perhaps because I didn't care enough to want to spend the time to get him what he needed. But if I was that guy, missing part of my leg and most of my teeth, and cadging folks for money in a fuckin Kroger parking lot, dammit I'd want to get really really drunk in a really big hurry.
There ya go then... this is what you want, this is what you get...