Random Act of Scary Kindness

I was driving home on the usual route today when I noticed a woman, jogging with her dog, on the sidewalk.  Then, about 100 feet in front of her was a boy on a scooter.  I didn’t think they were together because the boy was going fast, and there was a lot of space in between him and the woman.

“Huh,” I thought, “that kid’s going fast.  I hope he doesn’t fall.”

And then he fell.  His scooter slipped sideways underneath him and he did a nosedive.  I thought I saw his cheek scrape the ground.  The scooter’s back wheel ended up in the street.

I saw this all with clarity because time slowed down at that exact moment.  Time went so slowly, in fact, that I was able to completely stop the car about five feet before the boy when I saw him fall.  I pulled around him, then pulled over to the side of the road and got out.

It was obvious at that point that the kid and the jogging woman were connected somehow, because he was staring at her with his back to me, and great sniffles kept coming from him as he held out his hand for the woman’s inspection.

“What happened?!  Are you okay?!” The woman said as she ran up to the kid.  She looked panicky.  It’s probably because I was standing there, a little off to the side, like I was going to snatch up scooter boy and run away.

“I fell,” the kid sniffled, sounding close to tears, and showed the woman his hand, which was dirty and had a scrape along the fleshy part where his thumb connected to the rest of the palm.

“You fell!” she exclaimed.  Her eyes were wide.

I’d had enough of her exclamation points.  “His scooter slid out from under him, and he took a tumble,” I interjected.  (Yes, I really said he took a tumble. I can’t believe it either.)  As I spoke, the boy turned to me.  I could see he was 9-ish year old with blond hair and glasses, and there was no massive gash along his cheek like I feared.  “Good thing you had a helmet on,” I told him and smiled a little, thinking to get him to relax.

“Are you okay?!”  The woman asked the boy again, and without waiting for an answer, turned to me and said, “Thank you for stopping!”

Really, I think if she could have spoken in all caps, she would have.  She looked freaked out — more freaked out than I thought a mother with a rambunctious boy on a scooter could look.  I smiled at her and said, “Will you be okay?  Do you want a wet nap or something?”

“No, we’re not far away.  Actually, yes.  ONE.  Are you sure?”  She seemed hesitant.

“Oh yeah, no problem.”  I rustled in my car and found the antibacterial wipes I keep in there for when I check my oil.  I held the package open, and she grabbed one.  Just one.  I tried to talk to the boy again, this time saying, “hey, you were going pretty fast there, that was impressive.”

“A little too fast, I think,” the woman said, glaring.  “Thank you for your help!”  And then she turned her back on me.

I got back into my car and drove away.  The woman and the boy didn’t spare me a second glance.

So.  Would you have done the same?  Would you have stopped to help a kid who fell on his scooter when it looked like no one else was around?  If so, would you have grabbed some sort of identification, so that you didn’t scar the kid for life because he’s probably been told not to talk to strangers since he was born?  OR if you were the mother of a scooter kid, would you be freaked out that someone stopped to help your boy when he fell?  And finally, do you think I caused the boy to fall by thinking about him falling?  These are the questions that Unsolved Mysteries should be trying to answer, not some silly actual crimes.  Sheesh.

Image courtesy of notinponce.

Al Gore is my New Best Friend

I just watched the movie An Inconvenient Truth last night for the first time.  I don’t think Al Gore is an alarmist, although that’s what my sister said last night on the phone.  I think me and Al Gore could be friends, if he didn’t insist on showing a video of the atomic bomb in his movie.

Thank you for tuning in to this random thought of the day.  And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Thank Goodness for the Recession

There, I said it.  I am officially thankful for this economic downturn, and here’s why:  Frugality tips are popping up all over the internet now that we’re almost certainly in a recession.  Have you noticed?  Many of the frugal measures not only help the wallet, they help the planet too.  It’s amazing!

Well, not really.  For those of us who have been going green already, we know that being environmentally friendly also means saving some money in some ways.  For example, a lot of the tips recommend stretching your food by using beans and lentils in meals instead of meat, or in addition to meat.  Beans and lentils are cheap, filling, and can be just as tasty as meat.  And they’re also green!  The less meat we consume, the less artificial hormones we put into our bodies and the less water we consume.  Have you seen the quote that’s been up on my sidebar for the past week or so?

If I had known that for every pound of beef I did not eat, I would save anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 gallons of water, I would have been moved…. John Robbins points out that in the 1980s and 1990s, to conserve water, most of us went to low-flow showerheads. If you take a daily seven-minute shower, he says, and you have a 2-gallon-per-minute low-flow showerhead, you use about 100 gallons of water per week, or 5,200 gallons of water per year. If you had used the old-fashioned 3-gallon-per-minute showerhead, I calculate you would have used 7,644 gallons of water per year. So by going low flow, you saved almost 2,500 gallons of water per year. Wonderful. But by giving up one pound of beef that year, you’d save maybe double that. You’d save more water than you would by not showering at all for six months! [Steve Boyan from EarthSave]

See?  Amazing.

Then we come across the driving tips: drive slower, invest in a smaller car with better gas mileage, or a hybrid.  The hybrid may give you tax breaks, the better gas mileage will save you money at the pump, and driving slower will use less gas.  All eco-friendly ideas; all reduce the amount of emissions you produce and the amount of resources you consume.

Ah, I see we’ve reached the heart of the matter: reducing the amount of resources we consume.  Remember the three Rs?  Turn down your heat, take shorter showers, use CFLs instead of conventional bulbs, shut off the lights when you leave a room, conserve gas, carpool, take public transportation, shop at thrift stores, spend less at Christmas, eat less meat, make meals at home — all frugal ideas.  All green ideas.

I might have let this topic pass if it weren’t for the conversation I overheard the other day at work.  The fiscally conservative, inconsiderate, selfish, and usually annoying asshole of a man who works in the office next door came in to talk to us the other day about the benefits of buying a Toyota Prius vs. purchasing a Honda Fit, and their respective resale values.  This coming from the man who’s worked in close quarters with a nonprofit for five years (even helped out at some events), and who still doesn’t understand why nonprofits receive discounts and insurance companies don’t.  If he can learn new ways, anyone can.

Thank goodness for the recession indeed.

Nothing Like Change…

Ah, yes.  I just came across this article.  Shall we focus a little closer?

Senate legend Robert Byrd, approaching 91 this month and hailing a “new day in Washington,” said he would voluntarily give up the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee with the new Congress.

…

“I have been privileged to be a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee for 50 years and to have chaired the committee for ten years, during a time of enormous change in our great country, both culturally and politically,” Byrd continued in a statement released by his office. “I have learned that nothing is quite so permanent as change. It is simply a part of living and should not be feared.”

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who is 84, will take over for Byrd on the powerful panel, which oversees hundreds of billions of dollars annually in federal spending. Byrd will officially hand off the gavel on Jan. 6, 2009.

Yes, there is nothing like getting one really old guy to give up his reign over billions of dollars to ANOTHER REALLY OLD GUY.  Woo.  Go change.

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

I haven’t had much experience with true poverty myself, but I do know what it’s like to be poor.  (Heck, any college kid funding his or her own education knows what it is not to have enough money — leaving aside the inherent privilege in being a college kid and all.)

Seth and I spent most of our relationship together being poor.  One of us was usually out of a job (being college kids and all), and even when we both had jobs, employers in New Hampshire don’t exactly care about paying more than minimum wage.  We never had to face harsh decisions like deciding between food or oil, and we always had at least one car that was running.

Now, we’re pretty comfortable in our jobs and apartment.  We have excess income (or we did, before the engagment).  We have pasta maybe once a week instead of four times a week.  And I must say, it’s pretty easy to forget what it’s like to be poor.  When we moved up into the land of D.I.N.K.s, we purchased a neato new cell phone and iPod and started driving over 75 mpg on the highway, and promptly tried to erase our memories of poor days with buying the stuff we hadn’t been able to afford for 2 years.

Who wouldn’t want to forget being poor?  It’s very stressful, having no money, and especially having no money and no health insurance.  And yet, maybe if we thought more often about what it is to go without the things we want, and often the things we need, we’d realize there’s more we can do about poverty.

Blog Action Day has a page dedicated to what one person can do to help end poverty.  It’s not comprehensive, but it will get you started if  you feel like you want to do a little something.  I can’t do a lot at the moment, but I know I can at least stop treating money and finances like a taboo subject.  Baby steps, I guess.