d.p.a., baby

Back when I was still just getting comfortable in my pubes, a few years before the Y2K Bug changed our lives forever, I found myself manning the grill in a McDonalds kitchen, flipping burgers, snacking on nuggets and pickles (try it) and working, unknowingly, as an WWF proselytizer.

I wore a Stone Cold t-shirt (later replaced by an eyebrow-raised The Rock.) I had a WWF hat. I even, embarrassingly, taped as many WWF Raws and Smackdowns (and eventually, WCW Monday Nitros even) as I could and I even went so far as labeling them. Oooh, this smarts.

Anyhow, back then it was all about catch phrases, and one of the best came from Mr. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. The Texas Rattlesnake (what a name!?!? Shit, am I proselytizing again?) was a paranoid dude and he taught his minions to watch their backs by wearing his patented "D.T.A.: Don't Trust Anyone" shirt.

I loved that slogan and I probably would have purchased that shirt for myself if our Wal-Mart sold it. (And I probably would have ended up on some pre-9/11 version of a no-fly list too.)

I bring this up now because I recently witnessed something in the underground mall beside the metro near work that made me recall that motto.

I'd say I buy lunch about 90 percent of my workdays, usually because I'm too lazy or, more often, too late in the morning to make myself a sandwich to take with me. So me and my rag-tag group of coal miners head down to either the Promenade or the EC (Eaton's Centre) where we try to get in a sufficient amount of commissary in our alloted 30-minute break period (minus the five to eight minutes we burn waiting for the elevator and walking to the food courts.)

This daily walk takes us past the entrance to the McGill Metro station and down a corridor that I affectionately call the "Hallway of Broken Dreams." There are people huddled along the walls in various states of disrepair. There is the guy with the super red face, who is dressed nicely enough that you think he might be a genius, serial killer. (I have actually seen him cash his change in at one of our Promenade food joints, too. He asked for a five like he was going to deposit it in a bank account. For this reason, it has never even crossed my mind to give him any money.) There is the fat, white, balding, bearded guy with face tattoos who I never try to make eye contact with because he's always smiling and he doesn't look like he should legally be allowed to smile because a smile doesn't look right on his face. There is the tall black dude who comes up to you with his empty fast food cup but doesn't ask for money... he just puts out the cup. I'm not really sure why he does it though, because he is typically dressed better than I am and I have to be done up all business casual (BiziCajji.) And then there's the guy right outside the Promenade turnoff who looks somewhat like the professor from Tintin, but sits in his wheelchair, shrinking away, and on occasion, he will summon within me a bit of pity and I'll throw a few coins into his collection cup.

On Monday, Fitzy and I went down to the EC, where we walked past the regulars, right up to the guy in glasses who is always parked at that spot right where the doors open and where thousands of people rush past him every day. He sits in one of those mechanized wheelchairs and just looks out at you sadly. I think he has Cystic Fibrosis or Multiple Sclerosis: I can't tell the difference. (I'm not trying to be insensitive here. It's all ignorance.)

On Monday though, something happened that made me completely reevaluate the Hallway of Broken Dreams and the entire "help me, I'm hungry" racket. Now I'm not the most sensitive guy when it comes to this kind of charity, as you probably know if you have spent any time around this here blog. I've devoted a lot of meta-ink towards the people asking for money and I think I find it offensive for some reason now, since I was so taken in by them and their persuasiveness when I first arrived here as a naive, small-town guy. Maybe I look at this new hard stance as the first trait that I've genuinely adapted from city living.

Either way, what I saw Monday shocked me. This meek guy in the wheelchair, curled up almost in a ball all of the time because his joints are tangled together, starts yelling something that is barely intelligible with the echo in the hall and because of his difficulties speaking. "Gooooooooo oonnnnnnnn...," it sounds like he's saying. "Goooo oooonnnnnn."

Fitzy and I stop. We see the man looking over to his left, towards a slightly-older-than-middle aged Eastern European woman with a cane, quietly and emotionally pleading for money. "Gooooo onnnnnn..." the little man continues. The lady doesn't seem to notice.

Then, the little man starts to move and he's yelling louder. "GOOOO OONNNNNN!!!" His chair is buzzing as he zips off. There are about twenty people watching now as this little man in the mechanized-wheelchair burns over to the lady and, wouldn't you know it, rams right into her. "GOOOoooOOO!" he continues to yell as he bashes her again. The lady is looking around at us all, horrified. She doesn't know what to say.

Fuck the heck? I debate stepping in between them, but fuck the heck again? What would I do? I can't berate a little man in a wheelchair, can I?

The little man bashes her again and then turns back as the woman starts crying and scurries off the other way. Damn, the little man ran her off the corner like she was some West Side kid selling crack on an East Side street corner in Baltimore, MD. That little man was straight gangsta!

Fitzy and I have lunch. He isn't even fazed. I say, "snap out of it, man! Didn't you see what just happened?" He says, "I once had a guy come up to me on the train in Toronto. He had nuts in his mouth and he just walked up to me and started spitting them in my face and he started saying 'No one is doing anything. Can you believe it?' and he kept spitting the nuts. I just walked away.'" He says he can't be bothered by anything he sees after that.

We ate lunch and then we left and we walked past the little man, looking as sad and pathetic as always. We continued walking back to the coal mine and we saw the bewildered lady, still crying, still with the cane, still frazzled, still asking for money.

And it dawned on me that Stone Cold's motto could be altered just a little bit to encapsulate that experience.

So that's why I say D.P.A: Don't Pity Anyone.