Jimmy Kimmel's "Celebrities reading mean tweets" is one of his funniest and most parodied segments. But when a Canadian charity asked local homeless folks to read what people had to say about homelessness on Twitter, the result wasn't funny at all.
Homeless people are still people.
One December evening, my husband Patrick and I were stopped outside our building by a homeless man asking for a cigarette. Pat, being the friendly and talkative guy that he is, happily offered him a cigarette and struck up a conversation with him while I tried to hurry us inside away from the cold. It was in those few moments — while Pat and the man laughed about how crappy the winter had been and the price of cigarettes — that a wave of embarrassment washed over me. Here I was feeling put out over a few minutes chatting with this man because I was cold. Meanwhile, he'd be stuck outside long after our conversation ended. And in talking to him, the man went from being a "homeless guy" to being a guy in our neighborhood who was fed up with city life just like we were, but he was still able to laugh it off with a smile.
[For more of this story, curated by Franchesca Ramsey, go to http://www.upworthy.com/theyre...ese-tweets-are-awful]
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