Eye contact is for the homeful

The grand IDS Housing Fair of Spring 2011 was last Tuesday. If you are still looking for a place to live next fall and you didn’t go to the fair, you are now pretty much homeless. The fair was your last chance to find anything worth inhabiting. At this point I would advise checking out Martha’s House and the Shalom Center because you will soon become very familiar with their homelessness services.

I’m not sure what your obligations were from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., but if they were anything like mine, you were in class, thinking about your future on the streets.

I think it was about 1:30 when I realized I could not attend the fair because of my class schedule. There was no way to concentrate in astronomy. Who cares about hot blackbodies and how light shines through them? I was about to become homeless.

The person next to me could tell I was distraught about something, something far worse than the poor quality of the VHS we were watching about the sun. No, it wasn’t that, I would soon be used to videotapes again; where I was going they didn’t have the luxury of DVDs and high definition television sets.

“Aw,” she started. “Why you tearing up?”

“I am slowly becoming a child of the streets,” I replied, looking sternly into her eyes. “My people hide in the shadows, waiting for you to throw out leftover Baja Fresh burritos and recyclable bottles.”

For the rest of the class, neither of us looked at each other. This was another part of life I should soon become used to not having. Eye contact is for the homefull.

Later that day I was working on my pilfering skills when I was caught by an old friend. He asked me why I smelled so bad. I replied that homeless people don’t have bathrooms.

He felt sorry for me so he helped me get a bite to eat. During a hearty meal of coffee and Clif Bars I told him of my sorrows. How because I missed the housing fair I had ruined my future. No more daily showering and pillow-top mattresses for me.

He told me all was not lost. Every day the internet had virtual housing fairs on websites like www.heraldtimesrentals.com and individual listings on Craigslist. And if all else fails there is always walking around town and writing down the phone numbers on rental signs.

He also reminded me I still had a lease until August.

I was not homeless after all.

“So it seems,” I said and excused myself to the bathroom.


E-mail: nicjacob@indiana.edu