Posted on 01/06/2005 4:16:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
I didn't recognize the cellphone on caller ID but answered anyway. A man started talking about a local charity. ''Look,'' I interrupted, ''I don't have any money to give you. My husband left me. I've got two little kids, and I'm behind on the rent.''
He quickly clarified that he wasn't calling for a donation but to help. He said he was a doctor and a volunteer for an organization called Warm the Children, and I had signed up for help at my son's school. He offered to give me $80 for each of my children to buy clothes. All I had to do was meet him at Meijer -- a local, family-owned superstore -- to do the shopping. I was shoving pants onto my son Gabriel, who never wants to get dressed, so it took a minute to comprehend: Could it be true?
The doctor mentioned filling out forms. While I imagined letting a stranger pay for our clothes, Gabriel took off his pants and ran away. Did I really want a handout? Should I endure a bit of humiliation to provide some essentials for my kids? I felt as if I had no choice. Sammy, my 7-year-old, had outgrown his shoes.
The night before we were to meet, the kids were with their dad, so I went to the store to shop, making sure to stay within the allotted amount. Then, I found a manager. We put a note on the clothes and left it behind the customer-service counter. I was hoping this would expedite the process and minimize my contact with the doctor: here we go, hey, thanks, goodbye.
In the morning I dressed the kids in clean clothes. (There, I thought, we don't look poor.) On the way to Meijer, the boys jumped in puddles, soaking themselves to the waist. With mud.
The lady behind the service counter couldn't find my basket but had a good idea where it went. ''There's an Asian woman who doesn't speak English,'' she said. ''I bet she put it all back.'' I ran around the store grabbing snow boots, dress shirts and socks I chose the night before.
While we waited by the entrance, my littlest guy climbed out of the cart and started hopping up and down while watching himself on a security monitor. I knew this dance; it meant I had about 10 minutes before he had a meltdown. I thought about leaving; maybe my father would give me more money. But then I saw Sammy, who never complains, just sitting bleary-eyed in the cart, tolerating his boredom.
When the doctor arrived, he looked as kind and reassuring as he sounded on the phone. He greeted me and introduced a lanky teenager: ''This is my son, Jack.'' He didn't tell Jack my name or introduce my kids. I shook Jack's hand before he retreated a safe distance behind his father, eyeballing my kids and me. I could not imagine why the doctor brought him along.
Once we were in line, I tried to keep the kids quiet; the doctor smiled and blinked at me. I talked nonstop, peppering Jack with polite questions: ''What school do you go to? Do you play sports?'' He gazed at the ground in my general direction. Occasionally he spat out a one-word answer. This stage of growing up is so awkward. I wondered who had it worse that morning, Jack or I.
The doctor showed me the forms we had to fill out. By mistake, he also handed me a set of instructions for how to facilitate this ''encounter.'' At the top, it said: ''DO NOT OFFER TRANSPORTATION TO THE CLIENTS.'' I looked at him in disbelief and repeated it aloud. Do not offer transportation to the clients? The doctor just shrugged. I couldn't tell if he was as embarrassed as I was, or if he had any idea how hard it was to accept charity.
Our cashier didn't know how to process my forms. After the manager showed her how, I realized I'd overshot my limit, so the cashier called the manager back for an override. The line behind us had grown long with frustrated shoppers, all of whom I assumed intended to pay for their purchases. Everyone stood in an uncomfortable silence -- except my boys, who pestered me for some water and got way too close to the doctor. I fantasized about adopting a hillbilly accent and shouting, ''Now you kids shut up er Santa ain't coming!'' Finally we were done. Gabriel was clinging to me and chanting, ''I want a drink.'' The doctor and his son said goodbye and hightailed it out of there.
Back at home, a friend called. I couldn't shake the feeling that the doctor used me as an example. ''For what?'' she asked when I told her. ''I'm not even sure,'' I said. To make his son grateful? To put a face on poverty? Realistically, the doctor could have just been on his way to drop his son somewhere, but now I was angry. At my soon-to-be ex-husband. At the polarized society we live in where the working poor voted themselves into deeper poverty while the rich still coast. Despite the doctor's best intentions, I felt scrutinized -- especially with his son there to witness my inability to buy my own kids their damn socks.
''You are under an incredible amount of stress,'' my friend insisted. ''I hardly remember most of my divorce.''
With luck, neither will I.
Charmie Gholson is the host of a public-affairs radio show, ''Renegade Solutions,'' and a writer in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Verizon land line is costing me about $100 a month. Cell service with a thousand anytime minutes per month, anytime-anywhere long distance free, text messaging, a tiny cute color phone, caller ID, call forwarding, voicemail, and all sorts of other bells and whistles, is $39.99 a month. For an additional $4 per month I can get email on it, too. And I can call my kids without being charged minutes, too. If I did not need to maintain a land line for the home security system, I'd dump it in a heartbeat.
warmthechildren sounds like a liberal's perfect idea of 'helping the poor'. I wonder if they've ever considered the fact that someone who is having to accept charity from strangers may not WANT to meet them and spend time with them shopping for their kids. Sounds like its designed to make the GIVER feel good about the whole thing.
Post 47...... That girl needs a whipping, as my Grand-Daddy used to say!
Good Morning, Girl!
Had no creme brule', got so stuffed by the tarragon chicken salad and mushroom soup and bread and olive oil.
I'm going back on South Beach. ;-)
This food is toooo good!
It was so good to talk to you!
God Bless you and your Mom!
I've got a Verizon land line with all the bells and whistles - three-way calling, call waiting, call forwarding, remote call forwarding, caller ID, etc, and it's only $50.27 per month, in New Hampshire.
Are your taxes and tarriffs way higher where you are?
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/tzedakah.htm
Maimonedes, a legendary Torah scholar, opined that the second most meritorious form of charity is when neither the giver nor the recipient know the others' identity. Next is when the giver knows the recipient's identity but the recipient doesn't know the giver's.
I think this arrangment falls in either the fifth or sixth level - giving before being asked, or after.
Thanks for that link. My b-i-l, who is a Catholic priest, encourages tithing in his Parish, and his description of it is very much in line with the Hebrew teaching.
I live in Pyongyang-on-the-Potomac (that is, Montgomery County, Maryland), so of course everything is taxed and tariffed to death and back again. My landline service here does not include any of the bells and whistles you cite but I am including the long distance charges, which I get zapped with for calling places that are a fifteen-minute drive away, in northern Virginia. This is one of the things that makes cell-only calling more attractive.
Who's your long distance carrier? Verizon also?
I get all my clothes from the thrift store. It's amazing that people won't use the thrift store because it is charity so I end up getting clothes from there.
3500 sq foot house and I wear dead people's clothes.
This woman is the poster child for the "blame everybody else for my problems" low class piece of trash.
I hope her kids turn out better than she. They can't turn out much worse.
You make a good point. I wonder how many charities are designed to maximize donations rather than to maximize "good". The charity owners are looking for big, reliable salaries and expense accounts and tax benefits and bragging rights at their cocktail parties.
Thanks for the link. I've heard good things about this Maimonedes fellow.
In gradeschool, we used to tease one of my friends because his Mother made him wear the shoes his departed uncle was laid out in. "Dead man shoes!"
Beats the heck out a 900 ft rental and having designer threads. Value is value.
I see that you're including long distance charges in that. That's no doubt the majority of your bill.
You do need to have a chat with Verizon. There are plenty of local calling plans that would give you free calls to No. Va. and others that would give you cheaper long distance plans based on your calling pattern.
I have talked to very nice people at Verizon who have helped me pick the cheapest plan for me. (They were so nice that I almost felt guilty about changing my long distance service to AT&T)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.