I told my child the stories of my past. I use to live in this small town where the people would wave and smile. It was where everyone knew their neighbor. But there was one person that no body knew. I passed him on the way to and from school. He sat against a red bricked building on a busy corner. People are not actually sure when he appeared. No body knew his name and was too afraid to ask for it. After a while he just became a living extension of the building. He wore tattered clothes that had seen many seasons. The colors were dull tones because dirt was a common factor. Hair inhabited most of his body like the rats in his dumpster bed. It made it impossible to find his face because he looked like a hairy monster. The smell that clung to his corner had 100 different guesses to what it could be. But he sat with no Styrofoam cup in his trembling hand. He had no cardboard rectangle with misspelled pleas for sustenance. He only sat with his voice. People offered change to him. They bent down with a polite smile and a sympathetic stare, a crisp $1 bill in their hand. “Here you go, sir.”

They held it out to where they thought his face was. His first reaction was a cough and a sputter which released the unknown smell in a concentrated form.

Then he would always reply in a gruff voice, “No. I don’t need your money when I have better clothes than you.”

He would adjust his worn winter coat and tug on his raccoon hat.

“No. Keep your money. You will need it for someone better looking than me. Which is no one.”

He would run his hands through his insect infested hair and pop his flimsy collar.

“No. I don’t need money when I don’t have to work in a boring job like yours all day.”

He would pat the bricks behind him and scatter mysterious scraps around his feet. He seemed to keep the scraps in his coat. But I wondered where he got the scraps when he ran out.

They would ask him how that could be. After all, he was man with no home or job. He slept in a dumpster for Christ sake! But he would just move the eyebrow hairs out of his eyes and give them a list of all the ways he was greater. No matter what they said, they couldn’t convince him. They would rant until they were panting. Then, with a resigned sigh, they would shove their money in their pocket and stalk away.

Day after day he was at that corner, never taking money. He would never speak and sometimes never move. I once dared my friend to go up and poke him with a stick to make sure he was still alive. She proceeded to do so, and he let out a grumble of gibberish. My friend threw down the stick and darted away as fast as she could. But I would always stop every time I passed to listen to the encounters he had with a few brave people. And I never understood. People gave him sympathy but he would give them double in return. People would try to give him money so he felt superior. He was man with nothing but he believed he was better than the people with something.