A Weird Apple In The Park

Last week, I was hiking in Griffith Park.  It was mid-day, and The Observatory grounds were filled with tourists and school field trips. 

Whenever both of these groups are together in Los Angeles, you can be sure that there are hordes of panhandling drifters with outstretched cups.    

Having hiked up there about a hundred times, I had been happy to conclude that the homeless seem allergic to this elevation.  (They visibly congregate to drink tall cans of beer and smoke tall pipes of crack in The Park’s lower areas.)  

That was the first reason why it was odd to see a sundrenched SoCal vagrant in the parking lot.  His t-shirt was a faded red and featured the Apple logo.  While he surely wasn’t an iPad owner (not even an iPad Nano,) he appeared to have more tech savvy than your average drifter.  His bulky 2006ish external hard-drive laid before his feet.

He bent over, outstretched both arms, but was unable to pick it up.  That was because he wasn’t just homeless, he was hand-less. The man had two less hands than myself (though two more stumps than myself.)  

This picture didn’t feel right, yet my Bullshit Detector was registering a Code Orange.  (Meaning: Scam In Progress.)  Only, I couldn’t figure what con he was running.  His stumps seemed a limiting factor to committing crime.  

Had I I picked up the hard-drive for him, it might’ve been the California equivalent of that age old gypsy baby-throwing scam.  You know, where a gypsy throws a baby at you, then you, with your hands (assuming you have them) catch a little Eastern European bundle of joy.  Before you can say “wow, I can’t believe I caught a baby, hopefully someone got that for YouTube,” your pockets are fleeced, and wallet stolen.  

Or, perhaps if I bent over, he would have Stump Clubbed me, or Double Stump Clubbed me.  Then, when I was down, his rounded appendages would have slowly, and methodically coaxed my wallet out of my shorts into his… you knows.

Or, maybe there really is a handicapped homeless man out in LA, who despite his lack of computer, really digs carrying around a few extra gigabytes of storage. 

I didn’t hang out long enough to find out.