Certain smells bring back memories, kind of like a time machine. For me, the smell of a government office brings me back to a time I'd prefer to forget. Even now, 26ish years later, I'll catch a whiff in some random place: the DMV, the town hall, perhaps a hospital waiting room, and I am immediately back there.
That smell reminds me of plastic chairs and fluorescent lights, worn, exhausted faces, and being a number. It takes me back to the day I was plummeting toward rock bottom.
I remember the weight of my 2-year-old's little body against my chest, the damp spot where she'd drooled on my only clean shirt. I'd been waiting there for hours, and she had finally fallen asleep. I remember pacing and thinking that I should've worn something nicer as if dressing up would've made me more deserving of help.
"Number forty-seven."
That monotone voice still echoes in my mind sometimes. I stood up, my right leg completely numb from sitting too long. My daughter stirred but didn't wake. I stood there in front of the receptionist's desk with my drool-soaked shoulder, trying to look like someone who deserved assistance instead of judgment.
She didn't look up. Just kept typing.
"I see you've applied for emergency assistance"
Her voice was sterile, almost not human. I nodded, then realized she still wasn't looking at me.
"Yes," I said, hating how my voice cracked. Just hours before, I'd practiced sounding confident and not desperate.
I babbled something about a job offer that wouldn't start for a month, about having nothing for groceries, nothing for rent.
She finally looked up, a quick glance just long enough to identify me and my kid before returning to her screen. She did not see me at all; she was just verifying that the person matched the data.
"According to your application, you've made approximately $7.00 an hour for the past three months."
"Yes, but I was just laid off. That job is gone, and I have nothing saved. Nothing."
Her fingers tapped a quick calculation. "Your income for the quarter puts you about 0.5% above our threshold for emergency assistance."
Half a percent. The words hit me like a slap. My body went cold first, then hot with something I couldn't name yet.
"But I don't have that income anymore," I said, hearing my voice rise and feeling my daughter stir against me. I forced myself to breathe and patted her back gently. I have zero dollars right now. My daughter needs to eat tomorrow."
"The guidelines are clear. You've made too much money in the reporting period to qualify."
Too much money. I remember thinking: Is this a joke? Is this some sick prank show? How can I have made TOO MUCH money when my kitchen cupboards are empty, and my rent is overdue?
"I understand this is difficult," she continued in a tone that suggested she understood absolutely nothing, "but there's nothing I can do. That's how the system works."
The system?
"This is ridiculous," I said. I have paid taxes since I was 14 years old. I have never asked for help, but I need it now."
"Again, there's nothing I can do," the sterile receptionist said.
Something inside me just... snapped.
I carefully sat my daughter down on the empty chair next to me. The tension in my body had woken her up, but she was still groggy.
I then grabbed an empty chair and hurled it as hard as I could against the far wall. I'd never done anything like that in my life, but something in that moment took hold of me, I lost myself in my anger, my fear, my shame.
"I need you to calm down." The receptionist reached for her phone.
"Calm down?" I snapped, "My two-year-old might not eat tomorrow, and you want me to CALM DOWN?"
I don't remember everything that happened next. The memory blurs like watching someone else in a movie: the police appearing, my daughter crying in confusion, and the threat of handcuffs against my wrists before the calm Officer intervened.
"Let's take a walk," he said quietly, guiding me outside, my terrified daughter now clutched against my chest.
On the sidewalk, away from that terrible fluorescent light, he asked, "You got somewhere to go tonight?"
I nodded, though the truth was complicated. We had a place for now, but without help, not for much longer.
After explaining that he didn't want to arrest me and just needed me to walk away, the Officer drove us to the local food bank. He helped me fill a box with enough to get through the week and slipped me a business card for a housing resource center.
It wasn't enough. Within weeks, we lost our apartment. Then followed nearly a year of couch-surfing and sleeping in my car when we ran out of friends willing to take us in.
There were nights I sat outside closed restaurants, longing for something to eat. Nights, I cried silently after my daughter fell asleep, wondering how the hell I'd get us out of this mess. And mornings I washed up in a bathroom, trying to look normal enough that no one would call CPS.
I rarely tell this story. Most people would never believe that the guy I am today once cleaned his kid's face with gas station napkins. In fact, even people that knew me then didn't know what I was going through. I hid it all too well. The shame of losing control, frightening my daughter, needing help, was too much to share. I buried it and put on a persona of being put together and under control.
That difficult chapter isn't the whole story I wanted to share tonight, though. What changed me forever happened about a decade after I threw that chair, when my life had transformed completely.
It was one of those fall days that felt like Mother Nature couldn't make up her mind; warm sunlight one minute, windy and chilly the next. I was headed to a client meeting, mentally checking off my to-do list when I noticed this guy sitting against the brick wall outside Mr. Mike's Pizza.
It wasn't that he was homeless—the city had many unhoused people. It was something about him. He had an energy about him that wasn't like. And he looked more put together. He wasn't slumped or sprawled but sitting with his back straight, like he was waiting for an appointment.
Our eyes met as I got closer, and something flickered in my chest. Not recognition exactly—I'd never seen him before. But something in his gaze felt... familiar.
I reached for my wallet almost without thinking about it and pulled out a twenty. It wasn't generosity, not really. It was more like instinct, or maybe pitty.
"Would this help you today?" I asked, trying not to sound condescending.
He reached out, and his face broke into this incredible smile. "Thank you. This is very kind," he said. What happened next surprised me. "Would you mind waiting just a moment? I'll be right back."
Before I could answer, he stood up smoothly and disappeared into Mr. Mike's. I stood there, not sure what was happening but too curious to walk away.
As I waited, the worlds collided. The memory of another sidewalk from another lifetime, standing outside that food bank with my daughter's tiny hand in mine, feeling everyone's eyes on us, hit me. I wondered if people were looking at me, loitering outside the pizza place. What might they be thinking?
When the man came back out, he had a slice of pizza in one hand and a fistful of bills and coins in the other.
"Here's your change," he said, holding it out to me. "The slice was only $3.50."
I was utterly thrown. Here was someone who clearly had nothing, insisting on returning change from the money I'd freely given him.
"Please keep it," I said. "That was meant for you."
His expression shifted into insistence. " This is all I need," he insisted, still holding out the money. "Take it."
Something about his voice sent me back to that government office, where I heard, "You make too much money," while my stomach cramped with hunger.
I looked into his eyes and saw something I recognized in myself: pride. Not ego, not arrogance, just the fierce insistence on being seen as a person with dignity.
"Would you mind if I sat with you while you eat?" The words came out of nowhere. I had a meeting and endless deadlines, but suddenly, that didn't seem to matter.
He was surprised as surprised by my request as I was by the change, "You want to sit with me?" The tone of his voice hurt my heart, clearly demonstrating how lonely he was.
We sat there together, outside the pizza place, an unlikely pair. He positioned his pizza on his knee with careful precision. I noticed he used hand sanitizer before eating and thought about all the gas station bathrooms where I'd once scrubbed my daughter's face and hands, desperate to keep her clean when everything else in our life was falling apart.
"Do you mind if I ask your name?" I said.
"Jerry," he replied, extending his hand to shake mine. "And yours?"
"Ryan," I said, "nice to meet you."
The formality was familiar yet awkward. For a brief moment, I wondered if one of my clients would see me with him. What would they think? Would they judge me? Would I lose them? I pushed the thoughts aside and regained my focus on Jerry.
"Why did you stop?" He asked. "You seem like the kind of guy that usually ignores people like me."
His point stung; it was true. I often walked past people like Jerry, pretending not to notice them. It didn't matter that I'd been in similar circumstances—that had been so long ago.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I just felt like it."
"I'm glad you noticed me," Jerry said. "Most people don't."
We sat in uncomfortable silence for a minute, watching people flow past, most of them ignoring us. I didn't know what to say.
Eventually, Jerry broke the silence. "I used to be like you, you know," he said. I was a businessman. I was successful. I had my own house. But then things just happened."
"I'm sorry," I said with sincerity. I couldn't tell him that I understood or that I'd been there. I was too embarrassed about that time, and I didn't want anyone to know.
Jerry smiled. "The world needs more people like you. That's why I gave you the change. I hoped you would do for others, what you did for me. Turn that $20 into multiple meals."
Something cracked open inside me then, not the violent rupture of that long-ago rage, but a gentler breaking, like ice thawing. Here was a man with literally nothing, teaching me about dignity, generosity, and love.
As we talked, Jerry told me about his dreams. He planned to save enough from odd jobs to get a room, then stable work, and eventually join the Peace Corps.
"I've always wanted to help build schools in other countries," he said, his eyes brightening. "Just because I'm down now doesn't mean I'm out."
When I finally had to leave for my meeting, Jerry carefully folded the change from my twenty dollars into my palm, closing my fingers over it with gentle insistence.
"Please pass this on," he said. "There are so many people who need it more than I do."
All these years later, I wonder if Jerry ever knew his impact on me. Because of him, I softened my heart and remembered the importance of gratitude and generosity.
In a world where we're increasingly divided—politics, religion, money—Jerry's quiet example resonates with me. What if the solution isn't better arguments or more persuasive points but simply seeing each other? Not as categories or opinions or threats but as people trying to maintain dignity in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.
I'm not suggesting this is easy. There are days when I can't bring myself to engage with people who see the world differently than I do, whose views I find deeply harmful. There are moments when the gulf between us seems unbridgeable.
But then I remember Jerry, who had every reason to distrust me, a privileged stranger who probably walked past dozens like him every day. Yet he chose to engage, to see me.
Would I have thrown that chair if the receptionist had looked me in the eye? If she'd said, "I see you're struggling, and I wish I could help"? I don't know. But I know that being truly seen changes something fundamental in how we experience our pain.
So I try. I am not always successful, but I try to ask different questions, listen without preparing my response, remember my own evolution, and extend that grace to others.
Because, every time I think of that government office, the rage that almost consumed me, I also think of that kind Police Officer who saw past my behavior to my desperation. And every time I remember the feeling of begging someone for a place to sleep, I also remember Jerry's dignity as he insisted on being fully seen regardless of circumstance.
This isn't some neat morality tale with a tidy lesson. It's just my story, one that bridges two sidewalks, two versions of myself, and two moments where being truly seen made all the difference. Maybe if we're brave enough to share our stories, the messy, uncomfortable parts we usually keep hidden, we might recognize ourselves in each other more often.
Maybe we'd throw fewer chairs, return more change, and remember our shared humanity. Maybe we’d ask the question that could shatter divides: "May I sit with you awhile?”
Raw, emotional, and beautifully written Ryan.
We all have stories of hardship and this was really was touching. ❤️