As I pulled into the parking lot at work today, there was a rather distraught looking old woman wearing a head scarf and holding a bag standing in the median between two of the facing parking sections. The second I parked my car she started walking towards me. She approached me and asked in a very humble voice, which I pretty much ignored walking to my office, for $1.50 to pay for bus fare. I told her that I didn't have any cash with me, which of course, wasn't completely true, and just walked right into my office.
Call it my new found "mothering" instinct or a guilty conscience but while sitting at my computer waiting to log in, I felt terrible. I could afford to give an old haggard lady a buck fifty to take the bus back to wherever she was supposed to be couldn't I? She was obviously out of place at the University and seemed very lost and confused. So, the guilt got to me and I decided to take my diet coke stash in my desk drawer and give it to her.
I walked to the door of my building and looked. She was still there. I walked out of the building to the cross walk...she was in the process of asking and being denied by two other people. Then, I sucked it up, walked across the street and gave her the $1.50 she had asked me for almost 10 minutes earlier. She said "thank you" to me several times and, with the few teeth she had in her mouth, blew me a kiss in the air and said "thank you" again. I felt good.
Once I got back to my building I just stood and watched. She was still standing where she had been when I gave her the money, waiting, I assumed, to ask the next person for $1.50 in bus fare.
I'll hope instead she was just asking for directions about which bus to take back home.
Call it my new found "mothering" instinct or a guilty conscience but while sitting at my computer waiting to log in, I felt terrible. I could afford to give an old haggard lady a buck fifty to take the bus back to wherever she was supposed to be couldn't I? She was obviously out of place at the University and seemed very lost and confused. So, the guilt got to me and I decided to take my diet coke stash in my desk drawer and give it to her.
I walked to the door of my building and looked. She was still there. I walked out of the building to the cross walk...she was in the process of asking and being denied by two other people. Then, I sucked it up, walked across the street and gave her the $1.50 she had asked me for almost 10 minutes earlier. She said "thank you" to me several times and, with the few teeth she had in her mouth, blew me a kiss in the air and said "thank you" again. I felt good.
Once I got back to my building I just stood and watched. She was still standing where she had been when I gave her the money, waiting, I assumed, to ask the next person for $1.50 in bus fare.
I'll hope instead she was just asking for directions about which bus to take back home.
2 comments:
oh well. good for you anyway. :)
I once had a box of granola bars with me while I was downtown. It was my brother wedding and I had planned snacks for every person attending. I am a retard, I know. Anyway, when we were leaving there where people outside the temple grounds begging. I told them that I had granola bars and asked if they wanted any. They didn't. I have been perplexed by this ever since. Why would they not want them? They looked destitute to me.
Also one time I was chaning Gentry's diaper in the parking lot at JCPenney and this lady came up to me and asked me for money for insulin. I told her that all I had was change, she said that anything would help. So she waited for me to finish changing his diaper and I got out my change purse and dumped it into her hand. It was probably less than a dollar in change, I don't usually have cash with me. As she walked away she said something about that not being much. Rude. And also if you see that someone is in the middle of changing a diaper full of poop wouldn't you just move on.
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