July 14, 2015--New York, New York: Garbage

"Mommy, Mommy, why did they put that man in the garbage?"

I had just dropped the car off in the garage to avoid parking tickets and was heading home for breakfast.

At the corner of 10th Street and Broadway a group of parents and young children were gathered to wait for the bus to scoop up the kids and take them to day camp in Riverdale.

Near the corner, as is typical on Monday's, the building staff had stacked a few dozen trash bags for the soon-to-be-arriving sanitation men. 

And across from that pile, in a service-entrance alcove, as always in nice wether, stretched out under a quilt, with a dog at his side, still sleeping, was a homeless man.

"In the garbage," the five-year-old said--as his mother was ignoring him, fiddling with his knapsack to be sure he had his bathing suit and sunscreen.

"Why are they throwing him away?" He was no longer just glancing obliquely the man's way but pointing and looking fully and openly at him.

Everyone else--the other children and their parents and care givers--were conspicuously turned the other way. At the traffic on Broadway though the bus always comes for the children east along 10th Street and would stop just short of the mound of garbage and the sleeping man and his dog.

"He's not garbage," the child said, this time with a tone that suggested he knew he was being ignored.

"Make sure to put sunscreen on after you go swimming," his mother said. 

The boy mumbled something I could not hear.

"And be sure to drink lots of water. There's some in your bag." She pulled out a bottle of Evian to show him. He was now struggling with the huge knapsack as if ensnared by it.

"The man . . ." he muttered, not completing his thought.