Human Writes: One Less Leg
Limping Towards Nowhere | Fiction | Fresh Soup
Since October 7, I’ve gone through a lot of changes, most of them unrelated to the war. One of the weirdest shifts is that instead of carefully avoiding eye contact with homeless people when I hand them a few coins, like I used to, I now find myself looking straight at them. I’m not sure exactly how this is a consequence of the war, but ever since I stopped avoiding their looks, they’ve been looking back at me, too. Often they’ll give me an encouraging gaze, as if to say, “Don’t worry, pretty soon we’ll both be out of this shit we’re up to our necks in.” Other times, their look just says, “It’s lucky I’m not you, and thanks for the shekel.” It takes a few minutes for the blend of pity and dread in those eyes to fade away, and during those moments I start to grasp that it’s not very appealing to be me: a normative citizen of Israel 2024, a man who walks around 24/7 trying to repress the perfect storm whirling around him, instead of taking a moment to sit down on the sidewalk and ask for help.
Hey, you with the earbuds, don’t pretend you can’t hear. It’s me, the guy on the sidewalk with one leg. Hold up for a sec. Don’t worry, it won’t cost you a thing. You don’t have to throw a quarter in my hat. Even if you don’t give me a penny, no one’s going to get mad. People don’t carry wallets these days. They pay for everything with their phone. That’s the future. The world keeps moving forward. Me, not so much. It’s a little hard to keep up with only one leg. But I’m not here to complain. I’m here to tell a story. A story about people with two legs: people who walk past me on the sidewalk, look straight at me, pretend not to see me, and just don’t get it.