I looked up onto the railroad and there it was -- a decapitated head.

A homeless man had put his neck on the rail as a freight train approached; a woman in a nearby apartment had seen it all. Fran and Luke were cutting through train tracks after a baseball game and stumbled upon the remains. I was the fourth person to see the body on the late October afternoon in 1994.

The man was dressed in ragged clothes with a precision cut to the neck. There was hardly any blood -- a far cry from any horror movie I had seen. The head lay about a foot away from the body. It had tumbled a bit from the force of the train, and there was a small gash across the back of his head, possibly inflicted by the bottom of the train. His face lay flat on the mixture of gravel and track.

My dad came and soon took me away from the scene. For a while, I was thankful I had not seen the man's face, but now I kind of regret that my dad came when he did.

The event never seemed real because I never saw his face. It was easy to joke about. It was another wild tale to tell.

The neighbors called the police, and quickly the man's final act of desperation had become a spectacle complete with news vans and police barricades. Sure, there was pity, but no one actually cared about him. Even the evening news snubbed him -- no airtime for a homeless suicide case.

It seemed to take forever for the authorities to remove the body; as more time passed, the crowd grew. At one point, a sheet blew off the body and exposed it to the teeming masses buckling the police barricades, anxious for a look.

The real show, however, wasn't under the sheet, but behind those barricades. No one seemed to care about the man, just the head. The same people who had shunned him in life had finally degraded him to a mere body part in death. I was one of them.

Later, thinking about the event, I realized something -- if it was anyone else it would have been different. Because he was a middle-aged homeless man there was no outpouring of sympathy.

If it had been a 16-year-old girl on the honor roll from a loving family who had put her neck on that track, then everything would have been different.

Most people tend to ignore the homeless; I know I have walked right by them like they didn't even exist, on occasion.

It seems quite elementary, but the homeless are people. Many people are so jaded and desensitized they feel no emotion toward them.

Our society has deftly turned groups of people (not just the homeless) into tightly packaged stereotypes. It is kind of an emotional shielding as to not worry about problems.

Hiding behind the stereotypes, people are less outraged when news or events bring difficult issues to the forefront.

The homeless are expendable. All poor people are black. Gay men are promiscuous -- they deserve AIDS.

My neighbors used the same comfort zone. They summarized the situation quickly: "He was homeless. It was probably his only way out. It's so sad."

I am not asking for you give your next paycheck to a panhandler, but just to be aware the homeless exist. Next time you pass by, realize their presence.

Next time cities want to move homeless people from downtown districts without caring what actually happens to the people, defend the homeless, be the voice for the voiceless.

That man at some time probably had a family, maybe even children. But that day he was only a grim novelty, a testament to our bitter indifference.

Don't let an entire group of people just fade into the background.