“There’s a guy at Kroger who doesn’t have anywhere to go,” Megan said.
The temperature was in the teens and still dropping.
“A woman found him walking down Shelbyville Road without any appropriate clothes for the weather. She got him a jacket and a hat. She spoke with the manager there to ask if he could stay there. But they close soon.”
I think I was about to start washing dishes after an early dinner.
It sounded like woman online was trying to organize for someone to take him downtown to Wayside Christian Mission to stay the night. He was a young man, she said, with scruffy hair.
Instead, of finishing the dishes, I decided to go pick him up.
When I found him, I walked up, asked if someone gave him the jacket earlier, and then asked what he was doing after Kroger closed, what he’s doing for the night.
“Do you want me to take you somewhere?” I asked.
He didn’t want to go to Wayside. Talking with him, it sounded like he’d been doing this a while, not the “22-year-old out on his own for a night,” young man we originally thought.
I drove him downtown. We talked for a bit. He kept talking about his “friends.”
I ended up dropping him off downtown kind of off 3rd Street at a friend’s house.
And it’ll end up being one of the more memorable interactions I’ll have all year.
