Homeless Cell Phone

Near the university where my son has his daycare, there is a constant presence of homeless people begging on the corners. There is one man that I see quite often, shuffling slowly along the side of the highway feeder road, a drugged out blankness on his face, adorned in grungy clothes, and smoking a cigarette. Today, when he turned around to shuffle back to his corner, I noticed a large black cell phone in his back pocket. I could tell it was one of the newer model iPhones, and so many questions popped into my head.

If you have no money, how can you afford to buy a phone that costs several hundred dollars? How is it that you have a newer model than I have? How do you pay the monthly bill? And if you’re homeless, where do they even send the monthly bill? If you have no power, how do you charge it? And maybe the most important question is…who are you calling?!