Skip to main content

Pay It Forward

As a writer, I'm aware of tension in the pieces I write.  As a fairly sane, amiable person, I'm aware of how much I hate confrontation.  Thus, my task is to always provide enough tension.  That means I have to tweak characters from time to time.  It means I must do the same for how I remember experiences I want to write about and stories I need to tell.
So it was with my most recent piece of memoir about how I balanced student groups, going against some of the strongest personalities in one particular class.  I've never been the kind of teacher who proudly and defiantly announces, "This is not a democracy."  I opt to agonize instead.  A fairly good piece resulted about a time I decided that the lessons of The Grapes of Wrath needed to apply to the inequitable groups my students made for a particular project.

But that got me thinking.  First about the novel and then about teaching it this time of year.  It's a good December novel given the mass proclivity for giving back.  But there's more: Katie and I were recently presented with an opportunity to give back that seems to be taking on a bit more life than we ever intended.  I can't even recall how it began, but we decided to play a little game of Pay it Forward.  It seems as if we couldn't do what we originally wanted because the opportunity came and went.  A little boy was flirting with a Peppermint Patty at the checkout stand at my local grocery store.  His mom was preoccupied with two smaller children and locating her Oregon Trail card.  That's the name of the Food Stamp program here.  So I decided it would be cool to buy the kid the candy bar.  Then it got complicated.  There were two other kids and a mom who might somehow feel funny about a stranger buying candy for her kids.  I let it go.  But not the desire.  Fast forward two weeks and I purchase a grocery gift card and ask a clerk to give it to a similar family, if not the one I saw.
She's really moved by that and has a family in mind.  A couple of weeks later she tell me that she did the deed and now the recipient wants to meet us.  That's cool, but I doubt it'll ever happen unless we orchestrate that.  What's more gratifying is that the grocery clerk was motivated to so something similar.  That' just how it's supposed to work.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Body Language

I'm sitting there in a hospital gown, waiting for my doctor to complete my yearly physical.  This is when I look at everything on the walls, read the medical posters, the instructions on any equipment in the room, look in every corner and behind every chair.  I study the paper on the examination table, laugh out loud at the picture of a smiling child holding a bouquet of broccoli, and the note the placement of the computer in the room. Finally, wondering if the gown I'm wearing is on correctly, I focus on myself.  At this point in my life I'm fairly comfortable in a doctor's office.  But it always seems to take so long when waiting for the doc to enter.  So I fidget.  Then I begin a tour of myself.  Scars are tattoos.  I look at the one on my knee and see myself at 12.  Whittling a piece of wood with my Boy Scout jack knife.  The blade slips and I cut a crescent slash through my jeans and into my flesh for life.  50 years later ...

Sex, Religion, and Politics

Watching TV to keep up with the news is like going to a party.  Sex, religion and politics, in any order.  Those are the topics of choice.  We hear about "twerking," and are confronted with all manner of exhibitionism in local news.  Should women be wearing yoga pants in non-yoga areas.  The office, the workplace, school, church...and that's just the teachers! Religion encroaches in all the right places.  Christian Mingle, the online dating service pops up on the screen during the grisliest of crime shows, the politician's speeches and the sit-coms so full of sexual innuendo that every second of canned laughter barely hides the grins, the gasps, the outcries, or the mindless guffaws. So what's the message?  Are we a society and culture in decline or just rapidly changing?  Probably both.  I recall a student once coming to school with a most offensive tee shirt.  Offensive in that the cartoon image on the front made it impossible for hi...