“When so many people walk by you and they just don’t even acknowledge your existence, it starts to make you feel obsolete. Like you don’t exist, like you aren’t even human anymore,” said Bradley Boyce, on-and-off Contributor vendor since 2016. “And that hurts.”
Boyce recently earned his permanent badge with The Contributor, but he first signed up to vend in 2016. After bouncing around between places, he’s back selling in Nashville for the first time in six years — but it’s not the extra cash nor the familiar faces that keep him going.
After all, vending is more than waving people over and making sales. Sometimes, it’s a victory to simply be seen. And it’s those moments, where regardless of any words being exchanged, a pair of strangers can acknowledge any hurt the other might silently carry with them, that keep Boyce going, he said.
“Some of these people that do the good deeds, that do acknowledge us, most of those are the ones who have been there, who have been at the bottom, who have seen the hard times,” he explained. “Not everyone who walks with a cane gets a check every month… they understand what I’m going through.”
It’s a powerful phenomenon when you’re struggling to get by — more powerful than people may realize, even when they’re the ones offering it.
“It’s just saying, ‘I see you.’ It’s saying, ‘you are valid, you exist,’” Boyce said. “I was sitting out on a freeway exit ramp one day selling pa pers, it’s like a four-lane exit ramp, and this old guy gets out of his truck from, like, the third lane and walks over to hand me a five dollar bill and tell me things will get better.”
As the stranger returned to his car, Boyce explained, he countered the sound of blaring horns from impatient drivers with a swift ex pletive before driving off.
“That right there, going out of his way to do a good deed and not giving a crap about what anybody else thought… that made my day. That one moment right there.”
It’s difficult to be seen when you’re a man of few words, as Boyce said he is, noting that he only speaks when he feels there’s some thing that needs to be said. But behind it all, there is still an individual — and he’s a firm advocate that everyone deserves to be seen as such, he said.
“Not all of us out here are the same,” he said. “We get judged as a category, not an in dividual. You can see it in people’s eyes.”
So while Boyce is a foster kid, a Contributor vendor, and a man looking for a home, he’s also a prankster at heart, a writer, and more than a label is fit to express. Things a stranger passing by can’t see.
In fact, if there’s one thing Boyce has held onto in dark times, it’s his sense of humor. It can provide an immediate catharsis when one tends to, “chase the rabbit,” as Boyce put it; in other words, to indulge depressive tendencies and spiral.
“Overall, I believe humor is one of the greatest medicines,” Boyce said. “I was always a clown, always the class prankster. I’m always trying to make people laugh … it’s OK to feel depressed, but we want to see you feel better.”
“I even went to a high school, we had prank week. It was an event we had every year, and for three years in high school… I was the reigning champion. And nobody was off limits unless they had a sticker,” he said. “They could go to the office and get this little sticker they put on their shirt [saying they did not want to par ticipate], but if they did not have that sticker, they were not off limits. Our principal never wore that! And it was his idea. He was one of the few principals I actually liked.”
Whether reflecting on childhood or consid ering his life today, he thinks of those humorous moments like “lights in the darkness.” Little reminders that every struggle eventually ends.
“This is a saying I tell myself almost every day, because it’s true: ‘it doesn’t matter how dark today is. Eventually, the sun has to rise.’”
But whether it’s his or another vendor’s words printed inside, Boyce just wants to see them shared, he said. It’s powerful, after all, being seen.
“I just want the readers to, after they read the paper, pass it on. If you know somebody who doesn’t read the paper, or hasn’t had the opportunity, don’t throw it away. Pass it on to somebody so they can see what the paper is.”
“There’s far too many people out there — and not that I’m complaining about people walking up to me and handing me money — but there’s far too many people out there who want to donate but they don’t want a paper… so pass it on. Maybe they’ll like what they read, and they’ll come find a vendor and they’ll come get one.”