Pictures From the Life of a Wannabe Altruist

Picture #1:
Years ago on a relatively cold winter's day for southern California, I came upon a little family pushing a grocery cart along a road through an orange grove. Always a bit impulsive, I pulled over. A God-thing, I wondered in the moment? It felt like I was actually being urged to pick them up. Whatever it was, I rolled down my window and asked if they needed a ride. The kids were dirty-faced and the parents were hauling a few bags of belongings. They happily abandoned their cart at the side of the road and piled in--all five of them--to my warm VW Rabbit.

"Where do you need to go?" I asked.

To the Rosewood Motel off Anderson Street, they told me.

Wow, I thought. They would have had to walk about five miles to get there. How did they end up in this orange grove? They were vague about it, as I recall, and I drove them to the motel, one of those low-budget two-storey types with the doors opening right toward the street.

Having been raised on angel stories, moral stories and miracle stories, I'm a hopeless storyteller--to myself if no one else. The inner chatter in my head tested out one dramatic scenario after another as I drove along, breathing in the unwashed scent of the family. One story went like this: They are angels, and God is testing my heart for unselfishness. Or: They were going to meet some horrible end, but I have unwittingly saved them. Or: They will throw themselves at my feet in gratefulness for making their lives bearable today in the midst of their hardships.

But I got no story, no moral or miracle. The couple didn't offer anything other than a simple thank-you as they all hopped out of the car. They didn't disappear when I looked away, didn't tell me "the rest of the story," didn't give any indication that I saved their lives or made their day.

Being a curious and overly-responsible sort of person, I stayed in the motel parking lot to see what would happen after the little family checked in. They got a room on the ground floor and let themselves in. As I drove away, the last glimpse burned itself into my memory: the door of the motel room still open, kids up jumping on the bed while the parents moved around in the room beyond them.

Picture #2:
Driving to the grocery store one snowy, bitterly cold New Year's Day when I was in college, I saw a young woman standing by the road with her thumb held out. No one should be out in this cold for long, I thought. I "felt the urge," pulled over and she got in.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Burbank," she said, warming up her hands in the flow of air from my heat vents.

Burbank! That was twelve miles away.

"But you can just take me as far as you can, and then I'll get another ride," she said.

I started in the direction of Burbank, and my little VW Rabbit just kept on going. All twelve miles.

She started talking. She'd gotten in a fight with a guy at the bar the night before, and he'd hit her, she said. She showed me where he'd ripped the belt out of the seam of her coat. And then she asked about the music playing on my stereo system. "That's Christian music, isn't it?" she said, starting to cry. She was so distraught, I reached over and held her hand. All the way to Burbank.  I dropped her off and drove back to the grocery store.

That was all. No story with a moral or a miracle.

The picture burned itself into my memory: my right hand by the gear shift, holding the hand of this teary young woman, about my own age.

Picture #3:
Yesterday I went through the drive-in at Starbucks. It was a beastly hot, humid day, a day that didn't feel like it was hanging together with any cohesiveness. I wanted something to ease my journey while doing errands. As I drove up to the speaker post, I noticed a sweaty middle-aged freckled man in a straw hat squatting down and working on some kind of conduit pipe right next to the speaker.

I placed my order, feeling odd that the man was forced to listen in. Then I addressed him, friendly-like: "Are YOU getting something cold to drink on a day like this?"

It took him a second to register that I had spoken to him. "Hah," he said, glancing over his shoulder.

How do you write that so a reader hears all that was conveyed? His tone was cynical and off-putting. He wasn't just irritated or wishful; he thought I was a bit nuts.

Fine, I thought. I'm weird and I say things people don't understand.

I drove on to the window and got my order, then "felt the urge" and handed the girl another $5 bill. "Do you have someone who can take the time to get that man a cold drink?" I asked. I motioned over my shoulder.

She craned her neck to look out toward the speaker post. "Sure," she said. "What do you want to order?"

"I don't know," I said. "Whatever you think he would like. I'll just leave the $5 with you to cover it."

She looked rather confused, and I drove away. I tried to imagine a young Starbucks worker handing the freckled man a cold coffee, and couldn't come up with any scenario other than a vague one of him responding with some slightly negative remark. As I rounded the corner with my eye on the rear view mirror, another picture got filed away in my head: the man in the straw hat standing up with his back to me, arms at his sides, silhouetted in the sunlight and looking off slightly to the left.

No moral or miracle or divinely-arranged quiz here. Just another picture.