Can you spare some change for...a guy who doesn't need your change?!!
Oct. 1st, 2003
12:40 a.m.
Now this officially registered as "one of those days". So I'm off on lunch, in the middle of a pretty stressful work day. In an attempt to relieve the stress, I get away from the office, and I drive up to the local Stater Bros. to grab a couple of things and a quick snack. Mainly, I'm just wanting to relax a bit, think on all the big changes coming up in my life (haven't even had time to write about those here), and forget about work.
So I head in, I'm ready to buy my stuff, and a helpful sales clerk (is that the right word for someone who rings up groceries? Bag person, perhaps? Checker technician?) opens up a fresh register to ring me and my two items out. She immediately starts calling me one endearing name after another. "Sweetie". "Dear". "Honey". "My dearest friend" (?). Like, every three words. One of the things I'm buying is a pack of Swisher Sweets and DESPISING myself for it, because I NEVER buy that cheap crap because I'm SUCH a cigar snob. But I felt like enjoying a smoke under the San Diego sun and blue skies, so I figured I'd give one a try. The nickname lady asks me, with chummy sarcasm, if I'm 18. I smile and say I wish I wasn't. I wouldn't mind going back the other way again. She she immediately starts talking about looking forward to the "other place", but that's a long way away. All right, then. She nicknames me several more times before giving me my receipt. And that's cool. She's overcompensating, but I'm okay with that. I'm away from work, and I'm in a pretty good mood.
So I go hang out just outside the store, moving from shaded spot to shaded spot as I smoke my crappy ghetto cigar. And I am relaxed. There's a nice breeze, the weather is perfect, and all's right with the world...at least for that hour. At one point I roll over to the ashtray and get rid of my butt, and I pull out the bag of Peanut M&M's I bought (big weakness of mine). I'm sitting next to the trash can in front of the market, just munching away, trying not to think about how much time I have left before I have to head back and call that annoying jackass in Alaska who thinks his totaled Explorer is the greatest vehicle ever assembled and he deserves compensation appropritate to this fact.
While I'm sitting there, I catch a woman coming out of the store, just out of the corner of my eye. She comes up next to me and stops, and is pulling something out. I'm not sure what it is, but she seems to be standing next to and facing me, so I appear to be part of whatever she's doing. I happen to glance over, and look down at her hand.
In it is a dollar bill.
She's trying to give me a dollar.
I'm just staring at it for a minute, trying to make sense of this. She's trying to hand it over to me, inquisition evident in her body language as she awaits my response.
May I say it again. The woman is trying to give me a dollar.
I'm 35. I work for a multi-billion dollar company. I'm sitting there in Dockers, a nice black polo shirt, and even a brand new (only a week old) pair of shoes. My hair is combed. I'm shaven. My cell phone is sitting in my lap. I'm wearing sunglasses. I look, as far as I can tell, like your average corporate casual business type off on his lunch break.
But I'm in a wheelchair. Sitting alone in front of a supermarket. So, of course, the only logical conclusion to come to is that I'm PANHANDLING.
Oh, MY God. There are so many things I could have said. But I was just too dumbstruck. Well, that, and I had a mouthful of chocolatey peanut goodness. I just sort of raised my hand and waved it in my best universal "Um, no, that's okay" gesture. She pulled her dollar uncertainly back, and spoke, this middle-aged, accented woman (though I couldn't place the accent). She awkwardly said, "Sorry. I'm sorry." And she backed up and hurried away to her car.
Now if you're getting bitter vibes from me on this, keep in mind that it comes from the after-the-fact retrospective position I'm in now. At the time? After she walked away and it all sunk in?
I thought it was absolutely hilarious.
See, the secret to things like this is that they have to catch me on a good day. Today was one of them. The kind where I let people nickname me and reflect on death simply because I'm in their presense, and I answer with a smile. The kind where someone can assume I'm selling pencils in front of the shopping cart rows because I couldn't POSSIBLY have, like, a job or anything in the pityable state I'm in...and I can find the humor in it. And the sympathy. I really felt bad for the poor woman. She'd been trying to do a right-hearted good deed, and realized too late that she was doing something really dumb instead. My wish, driving back to work, wasn't that I could go back and hit her with some righteous indignation and some humanist education, but rather that I could go back and smile and laugh and tell her it was okay, try to ease her embarrassment a little.
Because today was one of those days. God bless her. God bless the guy yesterday who came out of his business and offered to bring me water because I was sitting next to my van for a minute in the sun. God bless the chick at the drug store checkout counter that time who asked if I needed assistance carrying my purchase out to my car when the only thing I'd bought was a single tube of toothpaste. God bless the guy who came up and asked me where he could go to learn how to read braille (because all us handicapped types swing together, you know). God bless the old Asian woman who panicked at the idea of me putting my key into the back of my van to operate the lift, and hurried over and tried to take my key away from me and do if for me. God bless the poor Supercuts girl who was so nervous with me in her chair I was afraid her hands were going to start shaking and she was going to hack my earlobe off.
God bless 'em, good-hearted people all. Because on those rare days like today, when I've got the sun, and I've got the breeze, and I'm able to put all the other stuff in my life out of my head for an hour or two, I can just enjoy the wonderful and sweet absurdities of human nature. Wish more of my days were like that, and that I could be that guy all the time. Wouldn't it be nice.
A dollar. Come on.
Now if she'd tried handing me a five or a ten... Hmm....