Baltimore part 3: adventures in chivalry

I spent my last night in Baltimore hanging out in the shelter's card room, learning spades and discovering that I'm fairly respectable at it. My past of card-counting hearts playing helps tremendously. It was a lot of fun to interact with the men. They don't see women often (many of the men in recovery are not allowed to leave the building.) and took great joy in being chivalrous. I was offered lemonade constantly by some, while others checked to make sure I liked the songs on the radio.

At one point in the evening, between card games, one of the men asked me to come out in the hall with him. He handed me a bag full of Little Debbie apples pies. He had spent all day washing cars & spent some of his earnings on the pies. He wanted to thank us for going to the Inner Harbor with him the night before. He said he had a lot of fun & wanted to give us some dessert. It was amazingly kind and I thanked him profusely, even though I think those pies are gross.

Which was all very strange. We asked him the night before if he wanted to go with us to the Inner Harbor because our leaders told us that we would not be able to go if we could not find some residents to go with us. The shelter was not in a good part of town & they didn't want us traipsing off alone after dark.

So he does us a great favor and gives us pie. Overwhelming.