For some reason I also picked up several two-packs of hard-boiled eggs from the refrigerated section.

I am hazy about how it started; alcohol was probably involved.

I would walk past a group of heroin kids outside what was, at the time, the Big 5 Sporting Goods store. They typically had a cardboard sign on the sidewalk, asking for money. Sometimes the writing on the cardboard attempted to be clever, or funny, or appeal to emotion, with the occasional decorative squiggly lines or smiley face; sometimes it just simply asked.

I was at the Bartell's Drugs on the corner, picking up a few items, of which I cannot remember. For some reason I also picked up several two-packs of hard-boiled eggs from the refrigerated section.

Outside the store, as I approached the heroin kids, I took the eggs out of the bag, and then gave the packages to them. They were a bit baffled, but appreciative. Maybe a bit disappointed it wasn't just cash. I wasn't going to give them money which then would inevitably be used for drugs; I figured the eggs weren't worth selling for them, and had more nutrition than the junk food remnants left behind by students that the heroin kids then had scrounged from the trash cans.

So I did this from time to time. They would call me the Egg Man. Eventually that group faded away; different places, ODs, whichever. There have been new groups of heroin kids that have claimed that spot -- prime real estate, I guess -- and their numbers change. They also seem a lot harder, more with dead eyes. I no longer brought eggs.

I know, I know: Expert, texpert choking smokers / Don't you think the joker laughs at you.

-jj