Tis the season?
Dec. 8th, 2006 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladynorbertOne of two things just happened here, friends.
1. I just helped a human being in genuine need.
2. I just got hosed.
I had taken the weekly bulletins upstairs and took a different route to come back down, actually passing through the church and down the rear stairs, in order to put something else where it needed to go. As I reached the office door, a guy came in and for a second, I just assumed it was a day care parent.
Then he asked for the pastor. And when I told him that Pastor had just left for the day a few minutes earlier, he started to cry.
"I'm in a real bad situation, ma'am," he said. I was a bit skeptical, because I've heard that before (and sometimes, like the gas mooch last summer, it's just not true), but I could see that the tears coming out of his eyes were real. So either he was a really good liar or he was telling me the truth. And he shared this story:
"I came here a few days ago, to bury my father" [his voice broke here] "up in Northampton. The other night I was attacked on the bus by three guys." He rolled up his pants leg and showed me the injury, which admittedly did look pretty nasty. "The police have them on the bus surveillance tape, but they haven't arrested them yet, and they haven't recovered my wallet either. The hospital wouldn't treat me, because my insurance card is in my wallet and I'm from out of state, so I'm not in their files. I can't get anyone to let me work for them to earn money to eat; I need eighteen dollars for a bus ticket home; I'm walking around on a busted leg and I don't know what to do anymore!" He cited some of the other places he'd been already and how they wouldn't help him. He had actually been over in Allentown, and walked clear over here (in this freezing weather!) because he'd been told there might be work at a junkyard, but there was none. He just wanted to go home to May's Landing (I think that's what he said the city was called) and didn't know how he was going to get there. "If I could just get a ride to the Jersey border, I could at least walk on the highways in Jersey -- that's illegal here."
Naturally, I don't have the authority to hand out church money. But when he said it would only cost eighteen dollars it caught my attention, because I did have a twenty-dollar bill in my wallet. After listening to the rest of the story, and thinking it over, I told him to wait.
Well, you all know what happened next. I got that $20 out of my wallet and gave it to the guy. Then I told him how to get to the borough hall, where he could find out how to get a bus back to Allentown to buy his ticket home.
So the question is, and I'll never know the answer in this lifetime...did I just do a good deed, or was I taken for a ride?
In either case, my conscience is clear. I did the best I could to help him. But I really want to believe I did the right thing.
1. I just helped a human being in genuine need.
2. I just got hosed.
I had taken the weekly bulletins upstairs and took a different route to come back down, actually passing through the church and down the rear stairs, in order to put something else where it needed to go. As I reached the office door, a guy came in and for a second, I just assumed it was a day care parent.
Then he asked for the pastor. And when I told him that Pastor had just left for the day a few minutes earlier, he started to cry.
"I'm in a real bad situation, ma'am," he said. I was a bit skeptical, because I've heard that before (and sometimes, like the gas mooch last summer, it's just not true), but I could see that the tears coming out of his eyes were real. So either he was a really good liar or he was telling me the truth. And he shared this story:
"I came here a few days ago, to bury my father" [his voice broke here] "up in Northampton. The other night I was attacked on the bus by three guys." He rolled up his pants leg and showed me the injury, which admittedly did look pretty nasty. "The police have them on the bus surveillance tape, but they haven't arrested them yet, and they haven't recovered my wallet either. The hospital wouldn't treat me, because my insurance card is in my wallet and I'm from out of state, so I'm not in their files. I can't get anyone to let me work for them to earn money to eat; I need eighteen dollars for a bus ticket home; I'm walking around on a busted leg and I don't know what to do anymore!" He cited some of the other places he'd been already and how they wouldn't help him. He had actually been over in Allentown, and walked clear over here (in this freezing weather!) because he'd been told there might be work at a junkyard, but there was none. He just wanted to go home to May's Landing (I think that's what he said the city was called) and didn't know how he was going to get there. "If I could just get a ride to the Jersey border, I could at least walk on the highways in Jersey -- that's illegal here."
Naturally, I don't have the authority to hand out church money. But when he said it would only cost eighteen dollars it caught my attention, because I did have a twenty-dollar bill in my wallet. After listening to the rest of the story, and thinking it over, I told him to wait.
Well, you all know what happened next. I got that $20 out of my wallet and gave it to the guy. Then I told him how to get to the borough hall, where he could find out how to get a bus back to Allentown to buy his ticket home.
So the question is, and I'll never know the answer in this lifetime...did I just do a good deed, or was I taken for a ride?
In either case, my conscience is clear. I did the best I could to help him. But I really want to believe I did the right thing.
