“…And I just want to go straight to your house so that we can download that Modular Powersuits mod for Minecraft that I saw the video of, before it’s no-more-electronics time!” Little A was pretty much bouncing up and down with excitement, as she has been almost non-stop ever since we discovered the wide world of mods for Minecraft, which had been one of her favourite activities even before then.

“OK,” I replied “But we do have to make at least one, maybe two stops before we get on the bus. First at the health food store, and then second, if that lady we sometimes see outside Pape station is there, I want to get her a coffee and a sandwich or something. It’s cold out, and she’s probably hungry too.”

“Oh! Yes!” She bounced even more. “And then I’m going to ask her if she has Minecraft, and if she does, we can invite her to play on the server I want to start!”

“That’s really nice of you,” I said, “But I don’t think it’s very likely that she has Minecraft, or even a computer. She might not even have a home. When people do what she does – asking people for spare change, which is called panhandling, it’s usually because they have very little money to live on, so they usually can’t afford computers. Some of them are homeless, and some of them may have somewhere to live, like a room or little apartment or something, but just not make enough on disability or whatever they live on to get by, so they panhandle to make up the difference, so that they can afford to have food and stuff like that. I don’t know which is the case with her, but either way, it’s not very likely that she plays Minecraft, honey.”

“Oh.” She looked sad and thoughtful for a minute. “Well, we can just build her a home! We can invite her up north, to where Grandma Marilyn and Grampa Rob live, and build her a log cabin! And we’ll make it all nice inside like their house, and then she’ll have a home!”

“That’s a really sweet idea –” I began.

“AND — I’ll even build a special security system for it, to keep her safe! It’s going to have security cameras, and lasers, and special trapdoors so that if anyone ever bothers her, a trapdoor will open and drop them straight down, through the ground and all the way through this tectonic plate and into the Earth’s mantle!”