By JOSEFA PETE
Sitting in the confines of the City Library, a one day workshop on writing and my mind should have been awash with inspiring creative thoughts; instead all I could think about was hamburgers.
I had an all-consuming hamburger craving and every word from the speakers was muffled with my mind screaming for a hamburger. One hour for lunch and I dashed out deep into the basement of one of the CBD’s shopping centres and ordered one hamburger with the lot and a side of fries. Within minutes, my little plate of heaven was handed to me.
The first bite and very quickly my experience became quite ho-hum. The burger wasn’t great. Disappointed and worse still, I didn’t have time for an alternative. I pulled out my phone to be distracted by my twitter feed as I kept eating what was now my lunch, but certainly not my expectation.
On my second bite, a middle-aged man walked past me. He was pale, dressed in a light pair of tracksuit pants and a t-shirt, which seemed strange on such a cold Melbourne day. He started to rummage through the bin behind me. Silently, he was pulling out scraps of food and placing them in a ripped brown paper bag. I put my hamburger down and couldn’t stop watching. He sat down and ate the few scraps he had rummaged. Now my lunch tasted even worse.
“Excuse me Sir, I saw you looking for food, so I bought you a pizza.”
I turned around to see a tall, poised woman, in her smart business suit, handing over a cardboard pizza box to the man. She was sharp and concise. As soon as she handed him the pizza, she turned on her heel, stepped onto the escalator and was gone. There was no exchange of thank you, no exchange of any more words at all.
I was dumbfounded and felt incredibly overwhelmed. With my phone ready to tweet out the good deed I had just witnessed, I was stopped again.