A few pieces of pizza go a long way.

Girl Ninja and I do our grocery shopping on Sundays after church. Why we pick this day and time is beyond me. I often forget we are in a Trader Joe’s, because on Sundays it might as well be a zoo. The place is packed.

Since we were feeling pretty lazy after running our errands, we decided to pick up a Costco pizza for lunch/dinner. As we pulled out of the Costco parking lot and were stopped at a red-light, I noticed a 20-something homeless kid at the intersection. He was holding a sign that read, “Homeless and hungry, anything helps.”

We’ve all been in situations like this before, where you pull up to an intersection and someone is begging for money a foot from your window. If you’re like me, you look straight ahead and avoid all contact. Typically my heart start beating a little fast and my brain is screaming “DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT!” It’s like I’m trying to convince myself that, if I don’t look at him, he can’t see me.

There was something different about this kid. He was sitting on the ground, legs crossed, holding his sign. When we made eye contact, I could tell he was humiliated. As though he was frustrated by his circumstance. By his need to beg.

It broke my heart.

I asked Girl Ninja to roll her window down. As she did, this kid perked up and slow-jogged towards our window. I asked him if he was hungry. He said yes. We opened up our pizza box and let him take a few slices. It was a 5-second interaction at most.

But here I am, nearly twelve hours later, still thinking about it. Humbled. It really puts things in perspective. I mean, I here I am complaining about a Seattle housing bubble, but this kid is on a street corner wondering how he is going to get dinner. There was no question of what needed to happen. We had fresh pizza, and this kid was hungry. We needed to feed him.

It reminds me of a famous Stephen Colbert quote:

This was my “welcome back to reality” pimp slap across the face this week. Have you had one recently?