WALKING A MILE IN RAGS AND TATTERED SHOES
For one night of my life, I was homeless. It is a story I have never told publicly, and out of fear, only told my parents within the last year or so. I had no idea how they’d take it. But as an 18 year old freshman at the University of Colorado, for one bitter, unforgettable night, I, too, spent a night on the streets of Denver, Colorado. As a naïve and sheltered kid who grew up in the suburbs, it was an eye-opening experience of a problem I had only ever experienced from afar. Like so many, I spent my childhood with a lot of preconceptions, some true, some not, about homelessness. Even as a teenager, when I spent two summers commuting by bus to my job at the baseball stadium, they were people I would cross the street to avoid. They were the “faceless” individuals in tattered clothes with hands out for help, or huddled in shame and despair in the corners. They are out there, in more places than you realize, and the “problem” most “cosmopolitan” cities would