Social Experiment

My neighbor Ray lives in the group home next door and throws his full weight into his occupation. And by that, I mean that he is a real nose to the grindstone kind of guy who makes a full time job out of smoking cigarettes. I met him a couple of years ago when I moved into the building and he told me that he used to do street drugs, it messed him up, but he doesn’t do street drugs anymore. He was actually pretty lucid compared to the near catatonic figure that I see behind the gate nowadays. I used to wave when I would pull in the driveway on my bike, but he didn’t respond a couple of times when he was looking right at me, so I ceased that. It probably wasn’t anything personal, he is just kind of catatonic like that for the most part.

He started trying to borrow money from me one day when I could see the desperate need for nicotine written all over his face. I decided to conduct a social experiment and gave him a dollar which he didn’t seem all that grateful about. As much progress as the dollar would give him towards some generics, it wouldn’t buy him the whole pack. I told him he could pay me back when he got some money. It wasn’t long before I was again pulling into the driveway and I could see Ray shuffling in my direction. It’s not hard to figure out what he wants when he can be bothered to get up and attempt to get in my personal space. I took a step back while he asked me for some money. I reminded him that he was still delinquent on that last loan of one US dollar. He looked all crest fallen and whipped because he knew that his failure to pay back the loan just doused his dream of a shiny new pack of cigarettes. It took a couple more times for the concept to register. He stopped asking me for money and evens waves back on occasion now.