Irony (675Words)

Judd walked down the street, a big and dirty coat on his shoulders. On his feet were mud covered sneakers, untied. His head sported a black beany which covered his scalp down past his ears. All of the dark fabric hid any filth that was surely held beneath it.

In front of him, being pushed down the sidewalk, was a shopping cart full of odds and ends. Clothes, cardboard boxes, recyclables and other assorted items that had been scavenged from street gutters and trash bins; treasures obscured from prying eyes by the black plastic of garbage bags that they were enclosed in.

Judd’s face was unshaven. A scraggly beard had grown and was beginning to fill itself in on his face. It wasn’t thick enough to be a fashion statement, not dense enough to keep his cheeks and chin warm. It was a beard that had been grown out of simple neglect.

Slowly he shuffled his feed along the walkway. Respectable people crossed the street, or locked their car doors as he passed, worried that Judd’s defects might reach out and touch them if they got too close. Step by step he trundled, not in a set direction, with no known destination, but with the need to so do something, anything.





Two streets away from Judd stood a house, 3429 Rocky Way. The paint was peeling, windows and doors had been boarded up long ago. The steps to the porch had been broken on a day in the past that no one remembered any longer. No human had set foot in the home for quite some time. Standing in the overgrown front yard was a sign that read ‘For Sale’.

The insides of the structure still promised warmth and comfort for anything that could make it there. The kitchen cupboards still held dishes, waiting to serve food. In the living room was a couch, waiting to comfort someone after a long day. Bedrooms kept mattresses that were made to be laid upon and dressers housed clean clothes folded in their drawers.

3429 Rocky Way stood lifeless and void of its purpose. Except the few field mice who made their home in the basement and a pair of birds raising their youth in the attic, it’s existence was being wasted.





States away from both Judd and 3429 Rocky Way stands a massive skyscraper. In one of the many rooms, on one of the many floors, men conduct the acts that are required of bankers. They pick up and set down phones, buying, selling, and putting into motion foreclosure processes on properties whose thirty year adjustable rate mortgages are not being promptly paid any longer.

The banks don't want to own the property, they’re not interested in real estate, only the money that it can produce. The banks don’t want the houses to be empty, but they can’t allow people to live there for free. Banks get a return on their investment, that’s the rule, and if the bank isn’t getting what it wants out of an investment, no one does.

Building after building is subject to eviction. Homes become houses that sit emptily waiting for the market to change, for the land it’s on to become more valuable than when it had been bought by the banks.





Economy, a strange God, looked down on Judd who was oblivious that its forces kept him pushing a shopping cart full of his possessions. That same God knew 3429 Rocky Way stood empty, stripped of its purpose.

In the meanwhile, men who studied and sacrificed their time to understand how the laws of economy worked were rewarded for their worship with cigars and warm homes. Those men thought they were great for their ability to ride the wave that Economy created. Their God was a cold and competitive force, if they ever slipped in their worship, if another God ever rose up and took the power from it, those same men may become the ones pushing shopping carts.