“I’ll take that bet.”
It was a sentence I uttered all too casually while pouring my coffee one Monday morning, and a sentence that I would live to regret. My colleague and self-confessed Coke-aholic (as in Coca-Cola) Jacob laid down a challenge that he would go an entire month without sugar if I promised to go a month without coffee if he succeeded.
“Keep an eye out for watermelon boxes. They’re the thickest ones out there,” Fridge instructed as we headed for that night’s cardboard run.
It was only my second night sleeping on the streets, but I already knew exactly what Fridge—one of our guides for the weekend who has spent many years homeless—was talking about.
The call for a “padre” rang out down the line. Some poor “digger” (the colloquial term for an Australian soldier) had died and a chaplain was needed for the burial service.
At the age of 17, Caleb Bloomfield found himself in the dark basement of his apartment no longer in control of his own life. He was reeling from two major losses