Dude… you are my cranberry angel
March 27th, 2011 // 8:42 pm @ Site Admin
At about 2am I went to the 24hr Shoprite near my home to pick up some fruit and cranberry pills for a friend that had a UTI.
I have to point out that I love shopping at this time of day/night. No one is in the store and it’s a very relaxing, much nicer experience, then daytime food shopping. Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure, I get downright giddy, alone at Shoprite in the dead of night. I guess it’s sort of how an alcoholic might feel silently walking around an empty liquor store. It’s just you, and your best friends. Really I don’t know what it is about Shoprite at 2am that is so freeing for me, but I have even been known to do a special, little desert aisle dance with my friend Rob, which ends up with us briefly dropping our pants… but that is a story for another day.
Anyway, I go to the vitamin aisle and I see a kid who couldn’t be more then 17, carefully perusing the goods, clearly in some sort of physical distress. I can’t help but notice that he’s wincing and moving around, and after a few seconds of neither of us finding what we want, I break the silence with some levity:
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll do the same… We can cover twice as much ground that way”.
The young man sheepishly murmured: “Cranberry Pills”, to which I replied, a little too enthusiastically I realized, as it passed my lips: “Hey! Me too”
The kid finally points to the bottom shelf at a huge bottle of pills, he takes one look at them and can’t believe how large and expensive they are: “Nineteen dollars?!?” he says as I quickly see a smaller size and helpfully point out: “here is a small bottle of 100, it’s only Nine dollars.” The boy looked at me with the sad eyes of a teenager speaking to… hmmm it was hard to place… not a child… but more like… yes… his GRANDFATHER: “dude… nine dollars? for 100? I only need 6!”
Now, I like to think of myself, pretty cool for my age, and I rarely feel like I’m old, but I definitely had forgotten what it was like to be 18, with no credit card or wallet full of money,facing the ultimate choice of
Medical assistance vs. THE MUNCHIES.
“Why do you only need six?“ I quizzed. The kid immediately answered confidently: “To clean me out“. Hmmm… CLEARLY this young man was quite experienced in matters concerning UTI’s and how his body responded to the taking of fruit pills.
As my brain was digesting all this, my free market mind wondered how much this young man might pay for the 6 pills he needed. As I pondered this for an instant, he and his friend looked at each other with a knowing glance and silently realized that they had an even higher calling that needed to be attended to…
The Donuts and Cookie aisle.
I picked up the bottle of one hundred, and finished my shopping but I realized I felt a little, well… sad. Why hadn’t I just offered to GIVE HIM the pills? I had thought of that ever so briefly, right before the devil kicked the angel off my shoulder and insisted I think about the going market price for Cranberry Pills, at a Shoprite, after 2am. Why didn’t I act on my first thought? Surely I could have spared 6 of my 100 pills for this poor young man, who was faced with such a dilemma. As I put what felt like my 43rd, expensive, out of season plum into my bag and started off for the register I thought to myself:
“I suck…”
As I neared the front of the store I became less and less happy with myself and more and more sure something needed to be done. I scanned the aisles, I saw no one. I thought to myself, “maybe I should go looking for this kid in the parking lot and give him the pills?” I also thought to myself:
“You are going to look like a drug dealer, no… worse! I’m going to look like a pedophile trying to lure this young man into my car with the promise of 6 cranberry pills?”
Conflicted and feeling pretty poopy about myself, I made the left turn, into the one open checkout line and what do you know… there they were, right in front of me, getting change from buying their cookies and donuts.
I looked at the kid and questioned: “You didn’t get the pills?”
I was sure that I would get the snotty look of: “Please old man, I need munchies, fuck my UTI” but instead, got a look from a sad kid who’s dick hurt and probably knew his finest moment was not this choice of immediate pleasure over the impending pain that was sure to follow.
As the cashier started to ring me up I suddenly felt like Mean Joe Greene, the football player who tosses his jersey to the kid in that old commercial, and called out: “Here Kid”, as I flipped the, now paid for bottle at him. He looked at me in amazement and mumbled a quick “thanks” as he fumbled with the plastic safety seal, trying to get the pills out as quick as possible before I changed my mind.
As I finished paying he handed the bottle back to me and said:
Dude… you are like my guardian angel, or something.
I laughed and told him to “take it easy”, but walking back to my car, I smiled as I realized how good this small act of kindness made ME feel yet how close I came to NOT helping him.
So it got me thinking,
How often does that happen to you?
How often do you see the homeless guy when you have a ton of leftovers in your hands that would feed him and will probably only go bad in your fridge? How often do you see your neighbor with 30 packages struggling? How often is your first reaction to go help, but something inside keeps you from doing it?
Let’s face it, this world programs us to be jaded and cynical, to not let ourselves be played for a fool, but usually we want to do the right thing, but we just often do not…
Next time your faced with the chance to do a random act of kindness…
don’t think… just do…
Be the person you want to be, Let your guts be your guide, go with your instinct.
I can tell you it feels good… and if you don’t remember that kind of thing being something that feels good, then I think it’s high time you tried again.
Category : Story Archive &Truth
