1 Week after Week 1 minus several months
Still 152 lbs

Random acts of kindness – May not always be so kind 

I was wandering around the house trying to decide what to do and where to go with my living the good life idea. I browsed the piles and stacks of things that I have meant to go through and have been unable to throw away over the years.

Having grown up in India, it is almost unnecessary to ever throw anything away. You are always surrounded by poor relations, servants (yes, we do use the word “servants”), and many people who are happy to reuse or recycle any item we have to spare. But the deep set need to stretch resources goes a little deeper in my family.

My father had a fine civil service job while we were growing up. We were well dressed and to all appearances were a successful almost upper middle class family. And so it seemed, even to us children. But in reality we were teetering on the edge of the upper middle class precipice.

My parents’ responsibilities were many. More people than just our immediate family were relying on my father’s salary for day to day survival. Plus, my parents had very high standards and they really did live the good life by stretching resources. We had a car when few of our friends and neighbors had cars. We had a British built car because my father was very picky about his cars. We travelled extensively. We bought books. We ate really well, and were cooking Chinese, italian, and all kinds of foods at home, when it was almost unheard of in small town India. We were very well dressed children, usually in the latest fashion. We attended expensive schools, because my parents valued education. My parents were generous to a fault when anyone with a hard luck story showed up at our door. But we made every penny count and we got rid of nothing that hadn’t served us in every incarnation possible.

My mother was stylish, creative, and very adept at using the sewing machine and at cooking. She sewed our school uniforms when it was strictly against the rules to use any but the school tailor, and she did such a good job that the nuns never could tell the difference*.  At the end of every school year we went through our class notebooks and tore out the unused pages which were then taken to the local paper recycler who sewed them together to make our “rough books”. The used pages were sold to the recyclers. Clothes were handed down always ending up with me, since I was the youngest and the shortest. After that, they were cut up and matched up with with some new bits of cloth or other old dresses. A bit of lace here, a frill or a  button there, and they emerged as fashionable new outfits. When they could not be reused as clothes, they became cushion covers. Old cushion covers became dolls’ clothes, mops and dusters.

It is easy to comprehend why I find myself suffering from borderline anxiety when it comes time to throwing things away. Fortunately, my problem hasn’t yet made me a candidate for possible public shaming on a TV show, but I do always try to find possible reuses for any item that has outlived its original purpose.

So wandering around the house that day wondering how to begin living a good life, I decided to go through the many unused clothes I have and donate them, or throw them away if they were not donatable. I was sorting the clothes into neat piles when I came across an brand new blue plaid Pendleton shirt that I had bought for my son one Christmas, but which he refused to wear**. A brilliant idea struck me. Next time I saw a homeless person standing at the street corner with a sign saying “Anything helps”, I would give them this shirt.

I got goosebumps at my lovely idea. I neatly folded the shirt and put it in a nice tote bag. After all, which homeless person doesn’t want a good tote bag too? Five days of driving around with this bag sitting shotgun and I still had not had one opportunity to hand this shirt to anyone. My enthusiasm was waning. Then opportunity struck!

I was in a gas station filling up gas in my car when I saw a middle aged man with a small rolled up sleeping bag, with a very elderly woman also carrying a small rolled up sleeping bag. They were clearly homeless, though judging from the way they were dressed and their posture and skin tones, I jumped to the conclusion they probably hadn’t been homeless very long. They both looked upset and tired, the woman particularly so. The man was yelling at her trying to get her to buck up. They looked at me and I got goosebumps all over again thinking I finally had my chance to do a really good deed and hand someone this lovely shirt.

I looked over at the couple and smiled. Sure enough, the man started walking towards me after loudly admonishing his mother to stay right where she was. “Can you spare some money?” he asked me. My heart sank. I really had very little money in my purse. I had planned to stop at the ATM after getting gas. But I had my beautiful Pendleton shirt which he would be so cozy and toasty in.

“I’m sorry I don’t,” I said, “But I have a nice warm shirt I can give you.” I was all bright and perky.

“No thank you. We have enough clothes.”

I felt all the dismay of rejection. He began to turn away, and stopped. “You wouldn’t happen to know a place where my mother and I could get something to eat, would you?”

Being a  librarian, I had a pretty good idea of where many of the local shelters were and began rattling them off. The man kept shaking his head. “I’ve been to all of them and they only give you bags of beans and rice. How are we supposed to cook that?” It sank into my consciousness that he had not been trying to buck up his mother, but was actually trying to talk his mother out of being hungry and needing food.  I could feel my face heating up. I was mortified. By my stupid insensitivity and for a system that hands homeless people uncooked beans and rice.

I rushed back into my car shouting, “Hold on.” I was going to rip those seats out with my bare hands if I had to, but I was going to find some money in my car. I shook out my purse, shook out my jacket pockets and looked in the glove compartment. $4.00! I handed it to him and pointed at the McDonald’s across the street. “Maybe you can get a couple of Big Macs for you and your mother?” He thanked me, went back and handed his mother his sleeping bag saying, “I’ll be right back,’ and walked right past McDonald’s into Subway. Well. I had got that wrong too. I hope he at least got a healthy half sandwich for them both that day.

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Notes:
*  I, however, spent the first week of each school year in terror expecting that I would be dragged out and publicly shamed, shaken and spanked during assembly. Those nuns could be downright mean and sadistic sometimes. But more about that another day.

** On a  side note: The Beach Boys originally called themselves The Pendletones, presumably in honor of the cool Pendleton shirts they wore.