Several years ago, one weekday morning I was standing in line at an outdoor ATM on a main street in my residential neighborhood in Chicago. One person was ahead of me at the machine, and another man about my age behind me. As we were standing there, a homeless person shuffled by, pushing his shopping cart laden with crushed aluminum cans, rattling along the sidewalk.

The man behind me and I both watched as he made his way slowly by and turned up the alley, no doubt in search of more cans to recycle in exchange for his daily sustenance. The other man glanced at me and I at him, and he said, “Hm. Must be one of those alcoholics.”

I paused and thought for a moment. The other man in line and I had both clearly stopped off on our way to work, were both dressed in clean clothes with pressed pants and shirts and ties and jackets, shaved chins, bathed and deodorized, recent haircuts -- the whole productive-member-of-society thing.

I thought about it for a moment and replied, “Well, I’m one of those alcoholics.”

The other man’s glance became a stare. “Really? You don’t look like an alcoholic!”

“What does an alcoholic look like?” I asked, to which he had no answer. I stepped up to the machine, got my money, said goodbye, and left.

I wish now that I had said something a little less accusatory. I wish now that I had said something a little more friendly, like “We’re all over the place” or maybe quoted Talking Heads’ song, “Life During Wartime:”

We dress like students, we dress like housewives

Or in a suit and a tie

But I didn’t. At least I did put the tiniest of cracks in that one guy’s false notion that alcohol dependence and being on the extreme low end of the socioeconomic spectrum are one and the same. In my awkward, irritating way, I was an evangelist for accuracy in thinking about addiction, and that might have helped that man, years later, when dealing with alcohol or other drug dependency in himself, a loved one, or an employee or employer.

But also:

Upon saying that, I felt a surge of affinity, even of affection, for that homeless man, far more strongly than I had ever felt for anyone like him before. He and I were radically different, of course, in so very many ways. But we were also the same, and the same in ways which, oddly, are deeper than the sameness we all share as members of and participants in humanity. I felt a kinship: we were family, and we still are.

That feeling has faded, of course, but has never quite left me. Ever since, when I see a homeless person - as I do with some frequency, living in a major city and all - I get at least a memory of that feeling, for which I remain grateful.

–Scott E.