Yesterday I spent the last of my money to go see the
motivational speech by Chris Gardner, author of the book,
"Pursuit of Happyness." I enjoyed the movie a lot and
thought he would be quite the man to listen to and meet and I was
right.
I sat 5000 rows back, about a mile away in Row X-40. I was happy
there were screens so I could see and hear Chris better. I was
seated next to a man with brown sugar skin and eyes the color of
golden ember. His personality was better than his looks and he kept
me entertained talking about jazz music, Atlanta and dancing until
Chris' speech got underway.
Chris began by letting the audience know if they were there to see
Will Smith he was not coming so go ahead and go home. He then joked
about how the movie producers spent 75 million dollars reproducing
something he and his son, Chris Jr. had done for free in their
efforts to reproduce their experiences of being homeless. He talked
about how he had talked to one of the producers and told him what a
fabulous movie, Forest Gump, was only to find out he was telling
the producer of Forest Gump, what a great movie he had made.
Chris talked warm, openly, honestly and candidly about being
homeless. He talked about working class homeless that work everyday
but don't have enough to make rent and all their bills. He
talked about how there are people that are homeless that don't
drink or use drugs. When we lived in our car for 9 weeks in North
Carolina, we did not drink or use drugs either. We had lost our
apartment because we were broke and most of our money was spent
commuting to work in Indiana. People would look at us like we were
an exhibit in a zoo. Men would offer me $30 for anal sex in a
bathroom. They were out of their minds. I only have slept with one
man in my entire existence, and that was my husband. We both worked
full time while we were homeless, I as a waitress by day cashier by
night, and him as a cook day and night.
Chris talked about not having the money to eat. I remembered how we
would drool smelling the awesome food like crab with butter or
fettucini with shrimp where we worked and dream about eating any of
it. In reality we would comb the car we slept in at night for any
morsel or crumb from a bag of pretzels we had split a week earlier.
We saved all our money towards, first, last and security.
Chris talked about the pain of selling plasma. We tried that and
they didn't pay us because they said they couldn't pull a
full pint even though it looked like they had, hurt like hell and
took a couple hours on our day off.
Chris talked about the importance of locks on the bathrooms he
would hide out it. The locks were important to us on our car to
keep anybody and everybody out. When the car died a nice do gooder
offered to share a hotel room with us. Then we got inside and he
tried to attack us and was upset my husband wouldn't share me
and do cocaine.
Chris talked about all sorts of important things. He was warm,
charming and lovable. He talked about how hookers, women of the
night would give his son $5 and that would frequently feed him for
the day, that they had their own United Way.
Chris was a gentleman and stayed after the performance and talked
to anyone and everyone who wanted to speak to him. He stayed as
long as the actual performance took fielding questions, motivating,
caring and stepping up for the audience. He was fantastic.
I was so pleased for him after 1 year of hell with his son they
pulled through and made it and got a decent house with a rose bush
out front. I am glad he is still successful and happy and shares
his good fortune.
Chris Gardner Author of "Pursuit of Happyness" book, motivational speech, my homelessness
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