The Woman Who Sat On The Bridge.

The Woman Who Sat on The Bridge.

She was the human equivalent of a dirty pigeon, an eyesore, and a nuisance. She was fat and ugly. Her clothes were dirty, and she smelled like an ashtray. If I had to guess, I'd figure her to be in her late thirties. Whatever her age, her life was already over; she just hadn't stopped breathing yet. She was everything she was ever going to be - a woman who sits on a bridge all day and begs for spare change.

And I hated her. I loathed her. I loathed her because she was too lazy to stand up and beg. So she sat on a dirty blanket and smoked cigarettes. When someone walked by, she hoisted her empty soda cup and said in the most nauseating voice, "Got any spare Chaannggge?" She dragged out the last word until I thought my ears would bleed. Chaannggee. And she spoke as if my spare change was a burden to me, and she was doing me a favor by taking it off my hands.

Every time I saw her, I was on my way to work. I had a job. A job I didn't particularly like. A job that left me feeling used and abused at the end of the day.

Eventually, my thoughts turned mean.

I wanted to tell her to stop smoking and use the money for food. I wanted to offer her a dollar if she would do ten jumping jacks. I needed her to earn the money.

Other days I would fantasize about throwing her off the bridge, like so much garbage. I'd be doing the world a favor—one less drain on natural resources, one less non-productive mouth to feed.

I imagined she lived in a filthy apartment with some worthless man who screwed her every night and then drove her to the bridge every morning so she could turn my stomach before breakfast. I imagined she had a kid or two or (God forbid) three.

I didn't even feel sorry for her snot-nosed kids sitting in their own excrement waiting for mommy to come home so they could have a piping hot meal of toast and peanut butter. But, no, I didn't feel sorry for them. I saw them as a perpetuation of beggars, an army of stupid people on the rise.

Occasionally I'd see a well-dressed man hand her money, and I wanted to slap him in the face and explain that giving her money was like feeding pigeons. "The more you feed them, the more they shit on the bridge."

If she got a job and paid her own way and stopped having kids she couldn't take care of; my life would be much better. I could quit thinking about her, hating her, and wishing she were dead. Hell, if she just moved to another corner, my life would be better. Out of sight, out of mind.

But, the more I saw her, the more I thought about her. She was everything wrong in the Universe. And it was her fault I was a mean person. She was the reason I turned ugly.

The reality of the situation - she is not going away. She is not going to disappear to accommodate me. The truth - she can't get a job. She's mentally challenged. No one will hire her. She couldn't get a job cleaning toilets or digging a ditch. She couldn't even get a job as a door-stop or a paperweight. I wouldn't hire her, and I don't know anyone who would. But yet she is here, living among us.

And now, years later, I wonder what there was about that woman that made me hate her so much. How could I be so resentful of such a pathetic creature? The most harm she'd done to me was to be an eyesore on the landscape. Yet, I managed to despise her, like I did the pigeons.

I wanted her to appreciate eating on my dime and get off the bridge. Is that asking too much?

See, it's easy to hate someone like the lady on the bridge. It's easy to hate someone further down on the economic food chain. They are the yardstick by which I can measure my superiority. I find it much easier to love rich, beautiful people. People who might look down on me with kindness and not see me as a pigeon, pecking my way through life.