So here is my debut post for this blog. For this particular one it is less of his story and more of mine because I didn't have long to talk to him but I got some interesting stuff out of it.
Tuesday evening I took the new Au Pair out to meet some people in Auckland so she would know some peeps and not feel so alone. So we took the bus downtown to meet my friend Kate before heading up to Ponsonby for a drink with Auckland's German socialite Steph. We took the bus down to the civic centre on Queen street. Queen street is the main hub in Auckland city. It is a smorgasbord of shops, cafes, restaurants, offices etc and is highly trafficked by tourists and locals alike. During the day the streets are bustling with people shopping, eating and exploring the city. When the lights go down Queen street is a different place. On any weekend there are people with pamphlets about Jesus on every corner trying to save the drunken souls that pass them, there are sloppy drunken students and whoo girls alike. There are also a lot of hard faced forgotten souls that set up camp under shop place overhangs for a nights rest, or to try and make some money. I personally like taking a stroll down Queen street after dark.
So we got off the bus on Queen street and there was an old man sitting on the ground and he had several shells with writing in them laid out on the concrete that he was hoping to sell. I stopped to have a look at his wares. He had collected shells and used a sharpie to write positive messages inside them and were selling the small ones for $1 and the large ones for $2. The messages ranged from 'I love my god' to 'I love my dog' and everything in between. I was scanning the shells to see if any of the messages tickled my fancy and he held up a blank shell and said if I liked I could write in one myself. I didn't want one I had done tho, I wanted one from this fellow, so I said thank you but no I wanted one of his original works. I selected a shell that read, "I like you as a friend. I do!" and offered him a $2 coin for it. He looked at the coin and said I should take another, I should take one with the paua inside (which is a type of shell) so I selected another even tho the other messages didn't appeal to me as much as the other.
Then he said his name was Sam and he had been to jail 7 times. He was an older gentleman but not really old so I can imagine he has spent the majority of his life behind bars. Keeping in mind I was with the new nanny, who is very young and scares easily, I didn't engage Sam too much. He gave me a piece of paper with very very neat hand writing on it and started to tell me why he hated the royal family. The paper was a handout of his message he wanted to spread. So here on this public forum I will share Sam's message. I am not agreeing or disagreeing with what he is saying, just simply passing his message along.The paper reads:
"
ALL R.S.A MEMBERS are greedy hypocrats. Let us defend N.Z with the best of our own ability, thats all to it. NO HOLIDAYS in their honour and all their satues deep in a park away from the public's eyes. Get rid of the #1 Parasites the villians of the world they call royalty. Just as me
SAM and ill tell you how, not by bullet (tho ive had the chance) but by ballot box. Respect has to be earned not passed on like material things. The queens system forces us to respect that. As soon as their born as 'special people' that is an insult to every human being. You who is reading this what brain produce got to be respected, not bum, brain produce does not stink (our speech) but bum produce does stink and thats why all royals qualified with their bum and that is an insult. Honesty is the way of life, NOT dishonesty way like our great great great grandfathers were that goes for moari and pakeha too. let us be a republic and and ram will not protect anymore. let there 3 holidays be nor more, (Anzac, Waitangi and queens bday) they can be normal days and those who wish to respect that can have day off at their own expence."
After a brief conversation with Sam about how stealing is wrong and how the NZ government is stealing from the people I took the paper he had given me and told him I was very sorry but we had to get going we were meeting a friend. I wished him luck on his endeavours, and he thanked me very much for listening. Then we headed off to meet up with Kate and I had the newbie giving me the hairy eyeball for conversing with the crazies. I just shrugged and said, "You never know who you're going to meet when you talk to strangers."
Something that struck me about this interaction is that although he obviously had a strong feelings about the government and royal family all of the messages in the shells were positive. They were all about love and friendship. So Kate and I have decided to try a social experiment with one of the shells I purchased from Sam. I gave her the one that says, "I like you as a friend. I do!" And now she is going to give it to someone on her bus (she drives for Magic Bus), and hopefully they will give it to someone they like as a friends and so on and so forth. Wouldn't it be neat if this shell with a friendly message travelled the world!? Wouldn't it be great if this tiny shell purchased from a homeless man spread the word of friendship and warm fuzzies all around the world one person at a time!? I don't know if it will work, but I sure hope so! From my experience travellers are often much more open minded then some and will hopefully be more likely to participate in an exercise like this. So we have set up a facebook page for the shell and the rules are as follows; 1. You can't keep the shell, you must pass it along to someone you like as a friend too (hopefully one you think will pass it along too). 2. Take a picture of the person you gifted it to and post it on the page saying where you were in the world when you gave it to them. That's it! Fingers crossed we can make this happen!
