Some seem to have the world as their oyster, while others get the short end of the stick. Dameon is someone who has gone through the wringer of life. He grew up in the projects of East Orange, N.J., not too far from Newark Airport.
He attended East Orange Campus High School, a public high school which was ranked 263 out of 314 schools in New Jersey, while Millburn High School, in the same county, was ranked third.
Dameon didn’t grumble or complain about his circumstances. He played the cards he was dealt and managed to get good enough grades to go to college. After graduating in four years, he got a masters degree in finance.
He got a job as an insurance broker for a large firm in Manhattan, rising through the company to become regional supervisor. There he met his girlfriend, Carla, who would later become his wife.
They started a family with a daughter, Regina, and a son, Lebron, and moved from East Orange to the Jersey Shore.
Dameon was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, two healthy children, and a dream career where he could travel the world.
That is, until the day he came home, turned on the television, and saw the news. His company was filing for bankruptcy because the CEO misreported earnings and lied about its financial health.
Overnight, Dameon was unemployed. The lack of money put a severe strain on his family. There were arguments, screaming, yelling.
This was only the thundercloud; soon the tornado would appear.
Dameon suddenly learned he would become a grandfather, when his 16-yearold daughter became impregnated by her 15-year-old boyfriend. Then Lebron, 14, was caught selling marijuana to sixth graders in a school zone. The judge put him in juvenile detention until age 21.
Soon after that, Carla filed for divorce. A judge awarded her the house, the cars, even the family pets.
Dameon was devastated; he was left with only the clothes on his back and a small duffle bag. He was broke, unemployed and homeless, drifting along the Jersey Turnpike when a red pickup truck pulled him aside and asked where he was headed.
“I have nowhere to go,” Dameon replied. “I lost everything!” The driver offered Dameon a ride to Washington, D.C. He hopped into the truck and the two laughed, drank, shared stories and spent a night in a hotel.
The following day the driver dropped Dameon off at Union Station. They said their goodbyes and good lucks. The driver gave Dameon 10 bucks and drove off into the hot summer night.
Soon, Dameon realized that he had nowhere to go. He had never experienced homelessness or survival on the streets. Dameon tried sleeping in a bus terminal, only to be thrown out by security. He then found a dumpster behind an abandoned building and crawled inside for a night’s sleep.
The night was chilly because he had no blankets, nothing to keep him warm. When morning came, Dameon, hungry and thirsty, began wondering where to find food.
All of a sudden he saw a white truck, and then a line around the truck. It was a church group giving out sandwiches. Dameon had never been to a soup line before; although he grew up poor, he always had a meal.
This was a new experience. People cutting in front of him for food, fights over iced tea and chicken wings. To make matters even worse, no businesses would let him use their restrooms.
He began to talk to those who lived in the shelters. They told Dameon about a shelter down the street. He checked in with his belongings, and the shelter assigned him a bed. Hard and narrow, the bed smelled awful and was dirty, but Dameon, who was exhausted, wasn’t worrying about a dirty bed.
He tried sleeping until he started to scratch uncontrollably. He decided to crawl out of bed, when he noticed welts all over his body. Taking off his shirt, he saw small brown bedbugs crawling on his shirt.
Dameon lived like this, bouncing around from park benches to shelters, eating in soup lines, trying to beg for a couple of bucks to get a cheeseburger or a pack of cigarettes. Dameon had lost hope; he thought this was his lot in life, to stand on a corner and beg for a sandwich.
He decided it was time to pull himself up by the bootstraps and get himself out of homelessness. He was broke and desperate but was willing to do anything to earn a little income.
After spending another night on a park bench, he heard a chant: “Holler, holler for a dollar, wear a button on your collar! I’m your button man!”
As the man did his pitch, Dameon noticed that people were buying his buttons. Dameon asked the button man, “Where do you get buttons?”
The button man took one look at Dameon and decided this wasn’t someone looking for a few dollars to get high but someone who had a desire to get out of homelessness and rebuild his life.
The button man gave Dameon 10 buttons and specific instructions on how to sell them. “Only sell them for a dollar apiece, and then you’ll have 10 dollars.”
Dameon was desperate and sold his buttons, then came back to the button man and asked him to give him some more. The button man said, “I sell them for 40 cents apiece.”
“Okay, sell me 10 more,” Dameon said. He then sold those buttons and soon was buying 20 buttons at a time. He got a little button vest, and those who lived in the shelter started cracking jokes and calling him “button man.” While they rode the yellow bus back to the shelter, Dameon was out everywhere selling his buttons.
Dameon was a button-selling machine. In the rain he sold buttons; in the snow he sold buttons; in the heat he sold buttons. He saved everything he made and was always polite. Never once did he grumble if someone didn’t give him the full amount. Sometimes he even gave his buttons away.
Dameon now has a smile on his face; he no longer eats in soup kitchens or in shelters. He has found a new wife and started his own button business.
