I met a homeless guy named Alex today in the Tenderloin.

He and I ate breakfast together and spent some time talking about why the Colts were going to win the superbowl this year.

We then spent some time cleaning the shelter we were in. I had a bottle of Formula 409 and he had a rag. What a time we had scrubbing the steps of a stage, the top of a ping-pong table, the edges of a pool table, the top of a piano–anything that we could find to scrub–we scrubbed!

When we were done, someone asked us if we could scrub the walls with bleach and a new rag. While we were waiting for the bleach we were looking at a floor rug that looked like the earth that was hanging on the wall. It was a bit of an abstract image of the earth, but you could make out specific continents.

Soon we had the bleach in hand. Alex had the bottle and I was scrubbing by now. When we got to where the earth-rug was I said, “Be careful that you don’t get any bleach on the world.”

He said, “That’s what the world needs–a good bleaching.”
I agreed.