Wednesday, August 4, 2010

I don't really know what to call this

so lets just call it a "pleasant chain reaction." Plans of larceny are easily conceived in a house with empty cupboards . Ditto for the will to carry them out. I will 86 the details of this plan, not to avoid self incrimination, but I feel that it would only detract from the merit of this particular story. I will just call it "plan B" This plan's contingency hindered upon the failure of plan A. It was pretty simple, over draft my bank card at the local Bloom Grocery store with enough food to hopefully last till the end of the week. If that didn't work, then use the 5 bucks or so we had between the 2 of us to get a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly so the women and kids back at the homestead can get their PB&J on while we executed "Plan B" My card was declined. No ground turkey, spaghetti noodles, chicken, steaks, eggs, etc for us tonight. I know the cashier was pissed at us for that, heh. Anyway, we walked out the store, down and out, armed with enough negativity to stick up a Girl Scout for her Samoans until some guy rushes up behind us, arm extended, grocery bag of ground turkey and noodles in hand.

He was the guy behind us in line. Said to us "I've been there before, I couldn't buy all of it, but maybe this will help. God Bess y'all." If I had a pen and pad handy, I could have made an impromptu list of all the possible scenarios that would have played out that night, this one wouldn't have made the top 50. A true testament to the frame of mind I was working with at that time. This one, unexpected act of kindness from some random good Samaritan wasn't exactly enough to fill the fridge, but it  did give us new perspective. I now had new scenarios to add to my list - ones that didn't involve penitentiary chances. 

We called it a night, got and in the car and went home and talked about what had happened during the ride back. About 10 days later, I was able to secure a MUCH better gig, and my roommate came up on some extra cash when he sold his car for a few stacks. All of our problems weren't solved, but it was more than enough to keep us out of the desperation zone for quite some time, and it all started from one small gesture of kindness from a complete stranger. You never know the significance of your actions, however big or small. His may have prevented someone from getting hurt, who knows. The things you say or do, have the potential to build or destroy. Imagine how accomplished our species would be if we focused our power on the former?