WordSisters

Author: Ellen Shriner

  • The Unintended Consequences of Random Acts of Kindness

    My 91-year-old Mom has an old green bomber jacket she wears for quick trips to the store.  The color is scuffed off of the elbows, and the knit cuffs and waist are pilled. The jacket isn’t good enough to wear to church, but it’s too good to throw away. And she likes it, or at least she did until the other day.

    She was checking out at the grocery store and the clerk had bagged two small sacks, when Mom realized she didn’t have much cash with her. Even though Mom had several credit cards in her wallet, she didn’t think to use one of them—to Mom, grocery shopping is a cash operation. Flustered, she told the clerk to put back one of the bags. She didn’t have the money for both.

    As she was walking out, the woman who’d been standing behind Mom in the checkout line caught up with her and handed Mom the second bag of groceries. This generous middle-aged stranger had paid for them. Mom managed to thank the woman, but she was mortified.

    Mom’s convinced that the well-intentioned stranger saw an old woman wearing a ratty coat and concluded that Mom couldn’t afford to buy groceries. Mom has a comfortable income, so the idea that she might seem in need of charity was profoundly embarrassing to her. Mom gives generously to charities—she’s accustomed to being the giver. She’s not supposed to be the receiver. She’s proud of being in good shape financially.

    My sister and I suggested other possibilities: Maybe the stranger was just being nice—everyone’s had the experience of coming up short at the checkout. Maybe the stranger was just trying to spare Mom the hassle of a return trip to the store.  Maybe Mom reminded the woman of her own mother.

    Mom was unmoved by our explanations. She doesn’t want anyone thinking she’s poor and feeling sorry for her. She’s shopping for a new winter coat she can wear to the store.

    * * *

    I had a similar experience when I was shopping at the farmer’s market. I was debating whether or not to buy my collie a smoked dog bone. I’d picked up and put back several bones while the vendor was selling me on the merits of his smoking process. I concluded that the bones might be too splintery for my dog and decided not to buy any.

    I felt a little bad about wasting the vendor’s time, so I stupidly said I didn’t have that much money with me, and the dog didn’t really need the bone. I wanted to move on and figured the vendor couldn’t argue with that explanation. But another shopper overheard the conversation and insisted on buying the $2 bone for me. I tried to refuse, but she said she wanted to treat my dog. So I let her give me the bone. I didn’t want to squelch her generous impulse. Better to be gracious. I’d get over my embarrassment.

    Those random acts of kindness—moments of pure generosity—had surprising consequences. Instead of being pleased and grateful, Mom and I felt stupid. Embarrassed to be seen as needy. Guilty that we’d contributed to the perception. We’d expected to be the givers, not the receivers.

    However, when I’ve truly needed help—say when a stranger helps me jump a dead battery—I am grateful and delighted that the world has such good-hearted people in it.

    I still like the idea of random acts of kindness and want to be more open and accepting of what the world sends my way.

    cosmic smooch
    cosmic smooch

  • Wandering in the Land of What If

    Picture taken by Christian Koehn (Fragwürdig), from Wiki Commons
    Picture taken by Christian Koehn (Fragwürdig), from Wiki Commons

    Lately, I’ve been wondering what the American appetite for post-apocalyptic stories—both movies and books—says about our culture. We are constantly bombarded with The Hunger Games, Children of Men, Book of Eli, Matrix and similar stories. And there are more on the way. I recently saw trailers for After Earth with Will and Jaden Smith and Oblivion with Tom Cruise. What attracts us to these themes?

    It Could Happen

    At first, I thought it meant that many people felt powerless and doomed—maybe we aren’t headed for irreversible damage right this minute, but it could happen in the near future. The idea that we could be nearly destroyed via nuclear holocaust, disease or asteroid isn’t so hard to imagine. Those possibilities already exist. Well OK, I can’t take destruction by asteroid seriously, but the other two aren’t farfetched. Bombing by rogue state (re: 9/11), drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the Ebola virus already exist. Today, even the flu is killing people.

    The “we’re all doomed” mindset may be part of our culture, but I don’t think that’s the main reason behind our cultural fascination with dystopias. I don’t see people flocking to see Amour, a movie about an aging couple coping with her illness and impending death—that definitely could happen, but it’s way too real and scary for a lot of people, including me.

    What If?

    Tons of movies and books like The Handmaid’s Tale, Children of Men, and On the Beach start with a speculative premise—What if the world were nearly destroyed, how would survivors behave? These stories explore human behavior as well as the strange new worlds. What If generally becomes a cautionary tale—because resources are scare or fertility is at risk, the government / a corporation/ society imposes dehumanizing restrictions on the survivors. Forced childbearing, extinction, or forced suicide are the frightening new realities. What makes the stories scary is our recognition that governments, corporations and societies can and do run amuck—it’s not so farfetched.

    Test Your Mettle

    Some of the emotional appeal of post-apocalyptic books and movies is that we identify with the heroes and imagine that if we were faced with the hardships, we’d be resilient survivors. We’d outsmart the evil government and resist being brainwashed. We’d escape. We feel more powerful than we really are.

    Well At Least My Life is Better Than That

    Or maybe it’s that by briefly immersing ourselves in the horrible world pictured in a movie or book puts the shortcomings of our own lives in perspective—at least I’m not scrounging around bombed out buildings for scraps of food or I don’t have to fight to death to save my sister . . .

    A variation on that theory is that getting caught up with a dramatic and frightening plot is a safe thrill like riding a roller coaster. Scary, but in the end, you know you’ll walk away unscathed.

    But do we walk away unscathed? Or do these movies and books thrill us but make catastrophic events seem acceptable?

    If you like this genre, do any of my theories fit you? Which ones?  If not, what draws you in?

  • Because you never know . . .

    The seventh graders filed into the conference room where me and the other hospital employees waited to meet them. For the past six weeks, we have been corresponding via email as part of a mentoring program established by a nearby public school. Most of the emails focused on answering a standard set of questions about working life.

    Only five mentees made it to the pizza lunch—several were out sick, one forgot his permission slip, and two of the boys lost their nerve—in other words, a typical seventh grade experience. The five brave girls in attendance ranged from a small girl who hadn’t gotten her growth yet to a tall girl with a womanly figure. Hard to believe they are both 12-year-olds.

    I was disappointed that my mentee was out sick, but I was also a little relieved that I wouldn’t have to engage in an awkward interrogation—what often passes for conversation between adults and kids who don’t know each other very well.

    Seeing the students took me back to seventh grade when I was part of two programs—a verse choir and a binary math class. I can no longer recall why I was part of verse choir—did I choose it? Or was I selected because I loved English class?

    In verse choir, we memorized and performed several poems as a group. My favorite—Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells”—was our winning entry in a verse choir contest. Imagine a dozen voices chanting lines like these from Poe’s lengthy poem—

    Keeping, time, time, time

    In a sort of Runic rhyme

    To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

    From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

    Bells, bells, bells.

    From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

    We loved it and so did the judges.

    The same young spirited nun who organized verse choir started an advanced math class that was held after school. I was never a math wizard, but in seventh grade, I did well enough to be invited. We learned about the binary number system (don’t ask me to use it now!) In 1967, computers and programming languages like COBOL were in their infancy. Perhaps Sister David thought she was preparing us for our future, or maybe she wanted to treat us to fun math—I don’t know. I was semi-clueless about the point of the programs in the same way as the seventh graders visiting the hospital were.

    Being part of these programs made me feel special and broadened my sense of possibilities. Today, I understand Sr. David’s investment in us and I am grateful she saw potential in me.

    That’s why I agreed to participate in the mentoring program—because you never know when you might spark something in someone else.