On Saturday morning, my friend Jordan and I drove down to LA to go to this Marvel vs. Capcom 3 exhibition. As you can see, we went to the right place on the wrong day; the exhibition is next Saturday. At first we were puzzled and completely baffled. In fact, when we got to the Kim Sing Theater, we looked around, confused. It was only after we looked inside through a crack in the wall that we realized that there was nothing set up. At that time, I checked my phone and took a second look at the above flier. It was at that point that I realized that I had been a complete idiot and misread the flier. I was feeling really bad for having Jordan drive me all the way to LA for nothing when we left. We were in LA with nothing to do, so we decided to grab some lunch and decide from there what we could do with the rest of the day. We went to a nearby Burger King, and that's where we met Jimmy O' Brien (I hope I spelled that right). Jimmy is homeless, and he was standing against the wall of the BK and, Jordan being Jordan, he went right over to Jimmy and started talking to him. We started talking to Jimmy about his life, what had happened to him, and how he had gotten into his situation. I don't remember the whole story, but there was a time when he was a truck driver and could pick any route he wanted because he had a good record with the company. He didn't mention what happened to cost him his job, but he also told us that he hasn't had someone just sit down and talk to him like a normal human being in a looooong time. All in all, we spent the entire time that we were going to spend playing Marvel vs Capcom 3 talking to Jimmy, which was FOUR HOURS. In short, because of his situation, he was on the outside of normal life looking in, even though he had previously been on the inside; the same way we were looking into the theater when we realized we were there at the wrong time. To sum it all up, the moral of the story is this: neglect no one. Everyone deserves to have someone to listen to them. And whether it's a homeless person like Jimmy, or two guys that just got the date wrong on a flier like Jordan and me, always remember: let those that are outsiders in on the party, too.
