Zemblan Grammar

It’s a good thing I am getting more used to the local dialect, because otherwise I would not have been able to fully appreciate this one hobo’s oratory fireworks last night. As he worked his way up to asking me for cash, he entered into a complex monologue befitting what should surely be the next David Milch project [forget the "family of troubled surfers" (try saying "a family of troubled surfers" with a straight face; I dare you); what Milch really should be working on is a twisted, Shakespearean drama about the impoverished people of New Wye].

Zembla is full of people struggling to get by, too: there, a person has to get used to being asked for spare change several times a day. Due to the very tough job market and the area’s apparent draw for runaway teenagers, the streets are filled with a fairly even mix of punk-ass kids (some of whom probably commute to the campus area in dad’s Range Rover to do their begging) and actual hoboes, all asking for your help. I have never personally seen anyone give money to those who ask for it, but I’m sure enough people do to make the crafting of those ubiquitous cardboard signs a worthwhile venture.

I think what the Zemblans have figured out is this: a person is either going to give them money, or not. A whole lot of rhetoric and speechifying aren’t going to change that person’s mind. Thus, the Zemblan hoboes mostly stand around on busy street corners or medians with signs, or they linger around the campus or downtown areas (where there are more pedestrians than cars), halfheartedly mumbling their requests at passers-by. The only ones who really interact with people are the hippie kids, who tend to step out into your path all, “hey, maaaaaan,” looking and smelling homeless and absolutely pathetic (except for the $200 hiking boots, for example). For the most part, if you don’t want to give out your spare change in Zembla, it’s easy keep on walking uninterrupted.

The fact that I have been living among and successfully ignoring hundreds of Zemblan hoboes for the last seven years makes me probably a heartless bitch, for one, but it also makes me unprepared for the local New Wye hobo tactics. Outside the convenience store last night, rather than employing the easily avoidable stationary-with-cup-and/or-sign method of begging, this dude just sort of launched himself into my general area and started orating, all calling me “Ma’am” (which I can not stand) and telling me how he’s going to tell me a story I never heard before, and introducing his characters. (”I am going to tell you something; can I tell you this? This is about me: I go to church; I don’t drink; I am a Capricorn; I have a story; yadda yadda.”) There is nothing I hate more than an unnecessary preamble, the relic of high-school English classes where we learn the inexcusable “rhetorical” “strategy” of Tell Them What You Are Gonna Tell Them, Then Tell Them, Then Tell Them What You Done Told Them. I’m sorry, but this structure makes me want to strangle a person. I told him to get to the point, which he did not, in fact, ever do. In the middle of listing his characteristics and expounding on his own righteousness, I had to interrupt and tell him I didn’t have any money, at which point he exited stage left and went off to court other investors.

I don’t really know why I wound up listening to as much of his monologue as I did; he sort of had a way of carrying on with his narrative that made me think something interesting was going to happen, even though he never actually got anywhere with it — he never did technically ask me for money, despite my requests that he get to the point. (”Okay, ma’am, I’ll get to the point. The point is, I am a man who doesn’t drink, blah blah blah.”) Perhaps his technique was aimed at more than simply convincing a person that their spare change wouldn’t be spent on booze; perhaps he was trying to charm, or even to annoy to the point of desperation, getting people to pay him to shut up. Me, though, I have never given cash to any stranger on the street, and I certainly wasn’t going to start for some church-going teetotaler who monopolizes a conversation.