My Man Slim

There are a lot of homeless people that hang around the USC area. We're not too far from Skid Row, and there's a little homeless Hoover-villish thing under the nearby 10 freeway. So I've interacted with quite a few. There is one homeless guy though, that everyone seems to know. Slim. He's friendly tall black guy with blue eyes and about 4 teeth. He hangs out at the same place every day and talks your ear off if you stop a while. My favorite line of his: "Hey you go to USC? (yes) You know I went to school? Yeah, I got my PhD from a place called The Streets."

He calls everyone "angel" and promises to come save you if someones trying to mug you. He remembers who you are, or at least does a damn good job pretending. Hell, he's even on Facebook (a fact he knows and brags about).

The other day was the first time I had seen Slim in a long while. They had been throwing away pizza slices after they were out for two hours or so. They are perfectly good! Nuke them and they're the same as the rest. It depressed me--food thrown away like that is painful if you've ever experienced not being able to eat because of a lack of money. So when they wanted to throw a slice away, I started throwing it in a to go box. I had about two pizzas in there by the end of the night. Afer work I rolled up to th ol' Spudnuts, and there was Slim. We had a quick exchange, and I think he was excited about the pizza...I just hope he doesn't get sick of it.