I Am Tired But Not Pissed Off

I have been living in the “Tent” for over a month now.   For the most part it is doable.   The staff, mostly volunteers, are not skilled in shelter work, but that doesn’t really matter as I don’t need anything from them.   Their only real job is to keep a lid on the place.   I have noticed that the “clients” in the tent have been getting rowdier, pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with.  But it usually only takes one incident, resulting in someone being thrown out, (rolled up) to bring things back in line.   And the clients themselves seem to be able to keep each other on the up and up, calling each other out for the less than respectful things they do.   Of course sometimes they back fire and things escalate, and trouble brews.

If someone plays their radio while others are sleeping, usually it only takes someone mentioning it to the offending person, to get them to stop.   The other day, the guy in the rack next to mine had been on a coughing jag – obviously he’d caught a cold.   I had just gotten over one and really didn’t want to catch another.  So, I told the dude to cover his mouth when he coughed.   Instead of just saying “ok”, he raised his voice and started cussing, becoming defensive and in essence saying I had no room to complain, since I snore.   I just shook my head and remained silent.  Yet even though I did piss him off, he has covered his mouth every time he’s coughed since.  Mission complete.

Then this morning, I found that one of my Timberland boots had been filled with urine.

Retaliation?

Should I escalate things and being some tit-for-tat warfare with this guy?

I reported what happened to the front desk.  I had no proof as to who did it.   It could have been the guy on the other side of me, to lazy to walk all the way out, in the rain, to the portajohns.

I don’t really want to risk my own bed privileges.    Perhaps I’ll just wait a few days until I’ve made arrangements to move to another shelter, and exact my revenge prior to leaving.   What kind of juvenile thing should I do?

On top of all this happening, I started getting a headache last night and it got worse as the night went on.  By this morning is was very painful, to the point of making me sick at my stomach.   It was caused, I believe by my sleep apnea and the new cold I’m coming down with.

Now that I’ve finished breakfast at McDonalds, I’m going to do my laundry.