WEEK 22 CHAPTER FOUR; MKMMA, CRAIGNITO, AKA SUBUCON, ACTS AS IF HE’S TAKEN A BULLET TO THE BRAIN AS THREE WEEKS NOW BECOME FOUR

THE BULLET TRAIN EXPRESS

· People asking for a handout, the “spare-changers” will be encountered.

· Most people, it seems to me, give them the shoo-fly brush-off.

· There are always a few people who will give something.

· Are the givers really doing the pan-handler a service, or is this simply reinforcing the bad habits of the pride-deficient “lazy moocher”, and it’s up to society to make the corrections needed.

· We’ve learned give more/get more, and the tremendous value of kindness.

· How would I handle the down-and-out in synergistic fashion?

· That thought occurred to me as a byproduct of what some might feel more self-serving than service rendering.  I’m referring to my recent requests for names and email addresses to build my Subscriber list. I’ve just had this uneasy feeling ever since having that brainstorm that made it unique and okay. Had I crossed the line and gone too far. Was it guilt I felt? If so, I could play “Tim the Tool man” and learn through practice how to make the most of my least. It was the least I could do. I just didn’t realize it until MKMMA came along.

· I’ve come to the conclusion that only those who also have hosted blogs have a “tit for tat” thing going on. To suggest that I will do anything in return for free WP bloggers must have sounded as hollow as I felt when matter-of-factly adding what I knew no one was going to go for. Keeping my head in the sand this way is a “What am I pretending not to know” inappropriate excuse. It’s like trying to justify that it’s sometimes okay to use artificial sweeteners to sweeten the pot, when only a little knowledge regarding the hazards involved in doing such nonsense has already contra-indicated all such violations indefinitely.

· I was standing with my mountain bike at one end of the Bart (Bay Area Rapid Transit) railcar I was traveling back to Alameda; when this guy traverses the between-car connection (something I’ve never done) to emerge out of the door at the other end of the car. He must have asked 30 to 40 people for $ on his way to me. He missed no one and no one gave him a dime — until he reached me. No, I didn’t give him a dime either. I didn’t have a chance. He swept on by as if our BART car was the passenger section of a Boeing 747 traveling at 30,000 feet, and someone just blew off the door ahead, exposing our “man of no shower” to the drop-in-air-pressure suction that is as common in the air, as chase scenes are on the ground. Worse than “Why bother asking this old guy with so much stuff loaded on his Mountain bike he can barely hold it up, and who looks as if he could use the money more than I can?” is “How embarrassing to be seen asking…”

· Of course, I am exaggerating a bit, because the creative juices started to kick in a day or two after this event took place.     (The BART train photo that would have occupied the spacious “between text” gap that you are currently riding on top of, has apparently decided to join my missing RoF in NEVERLAND. As much as I’m not sure what you might find there, I’m even more sure that you don’t want to land there…not without saying all your good byes beforehand. Scroll quickly to the text below, and you should be okay. Good luck!)

· In a very loud and commanding Master Key voice, filled with disapproval, I could have asked: “What about me? Aren’t you going to ask me for some spare change, or am I not good enough for you?”

· Having thus engaged our “money-moocher’s” attention (along with all the passengers – including those, just a moment earlier, lost in the deep trance of cell phone hypno-mania), I interrupt the deafening silence with the kind of sunny smile making it quite obvious that I was just joking, that instantly brings a calming sigh of relief up and down the aisle.

This avails a perfect opportunity to get to know this guy better. Obviously, if he is willing to go to all the trouble to bother people, only to be rejected nearly 100% of the time — as I just witnessed first- hand – and sometimes even provoking an, irritated, almost adversarial, rejection — all of which he had learned to handle with good-natured, composure and stride, etc., etc… — there must be more to this parasitical fellow than our stereotyped illusions would allow the less curious to see.

· How about I begin with a question or two geared to elicit his usual take home pay, how much time/how many trains traversed end-to-end to get what he gets, and some innovative suggestions to spruce up both his worn-out routine and his income?

I ask if he’s ever tried the blind guy with a white cane and big cup routine (that my missing RoF described in great detail).

I ask if he’s ever considered acting as if he suffered from CDD, aka Craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, aka lionitis (the condition Rocky, in the movie, Mask, suffered from – the Cher, not the Jim Carrey, version); or, perhaps, neurofibromatosis, aka Elephant man disease. In either case, a paper bag with two eye holes, a cup, and a sign describing why these two extremely rare genetically predisposed, disfiguring conditions require the use of one. A nice touch to add might be something like: “Please help me get to India, or Germany, or some other even more exotic land or place where they’ve found a promising treatment for this horribly disfiguring disease that inevitably causes death at a very young age.”

· This is as far as my missing RoF ventured.                                                

· I now realize that adding the novelty of the blind guy or the dying bag-head would undoubtedly improve his take home dramatically. However, there is a degree of insensitivity and dishonesty involved, of course. Let’s face it, spongers are best seen and not heard. If someone is willing to stoop so low to begin with, why not polish the art a bit. People will feel a whole lot better about themselves slipping a $20 into a blind man’s cup, than they would a centavo placed in the palm of a dependent, deadbeat, derelict.

A question regarding whether our BART rider is already running the risk of BART Police ire, by doing what he has been, anyway, and whether this could be raised to dangerous levels should the officer involved notice you are bringing in more bacon than he is — while walking the same DEAD beat.

These bullet points add up to well over 800 words. Time well spent? It was for me. Although just a bare-bones skeleton of its full-bodied predecessor, I’m glad I got this out there, before doing some research that reveals this has already been handled much more expertly elsewhere. And what happened to MKMMA? What’s this got to do with it?

RIGHT ON! Right on! You must have read my mind (Have you been vaccinated for Mad Cow’s disease). I ask: “What’s the MKMMA way(s) to make every SC (Spare Change) encounter a win/win encounter?

Before throwing out a few random thoughts on what was just noted, I‘m taking the liberty of sharing something Haanel points out in Lesson 23. In fact, it plays a pivotal part in the sit. We are “not a body with a spirit, but a spirit with a body.” This includes everybody, and in so doing makes the “WHY?” of it inescapable. How would you like to be the best-selling author of the Dummies Guide for Turning the Homeless into Millionaires? Don’t think a bum can meditate? Don’t think he has enough spare time?

So you don’t like the paper bag idea, because it makes you look too much like an armed robber, and some of those BART police have itchy trigger fingers. What about: do you have a 100 business cards that lack needed distribution? $5 might get your card to places it’s never been before.

Any other ideas? Should there be another law enabling beg-free zones – where begging is okay, but anyone caught giving to a beggar risks a fine of up to $1000 for first time offenders? Really takes all the guess work out of “Should I, or shouldn’t I?” But is it legal? What law isn’t? How about this one. Two identical twins are each driving their car, and each gets pulled over for the same seat-BELT INFRACTION. One has to pay a hefty $500.00 fine, the other gets off without so much as a warning. How can that be?Ever heard that wearing a seat-belt can exacerbate whiplash injuries when driving city streets? Ever heard of a Doctor’s note? When I was a chiropractor I wrote lots of them.

Does the 7-Day Mental Diet play any favorites? Nothing wrong with a happy Freddie the Freeloader, is there? In fact, if he isn’t happy, you’ve got the wrong Freddie…but I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it…or maybe? Before you all hit the rack tonight, can’t you just envision the Freeloader reading the mental diet or even Haanel to his shoddy friends under a freeway overpass, or maybe a boxcar making boxcar sounds carrying this crew across the wide-open Midwest plains on a warm moonlit night?