A few weeks ago, a woman who writes a blog I read regularly posted this question: If there was a group of homeless and needy families in front of you asking for help, would you give them money knowing that while some of them would use the money to buy food, others would use it to buy drugs?
The blog's comment section filled up rapidly. Some people pointed out that the question is a great analogy for the U.S. government's $700 billion economic bailout plan. Others said they never give money to people on the street while some said they always give money to people on the street.
I was in San Francisco about eight or ten years ago and a guy came up to me as I was entering a BART subway station. I had my wallet out because I was getting ready to buy a ticket. The guy approached me and said, "Hey, can you spare a dollar ... or a twenty?" While he was asking, he had glanced into my wallet and spotted a couple of twenties - so he figured it was worth a shot. I laughed out loud, but still only gave him one dollar.
I have always tried to give money to those who ask, even if I didn't have much money at the time. If someone is standing at a grocery store or in front of a Wal-Mart saying they don't have money for gas, I try to help them out. My kids saw me do this when they were young and I hope it left an impression on them.
My reasoning is actually quite simple - we're supposed to help those in need. The Bible says that if I have two coats, and my neighbor has none, I'm stealing from him. It does not say, " ... if your neighbor has none, you're stealing from him unless he's addicted to crack." What my neighbor does with my gift is between him and God.
Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. One time I arrived in the middle of the night for a pick up at a building that was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.
So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute," answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.
"It's nothing," I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated."
"Oh, you're such a good boy," she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?"
"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.
"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice."
I looked in the rear view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.
"I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long."
I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. "What route would you like me to take?" I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now."
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse.
"Nothing," I said.
"You have to make a living," she answered.
"There are other passengers."
Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
"You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said. "Thank you."
I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly, lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life. We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware—beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
I went to a University of Tennessee football game Saturday afternoon. The game was a blowout with UT winning 35-3 over the University of Alabama Birmingham. I sat with two friends and we had a group of four teenage boys sitting directly in front of us (the group of teenagers included the son of one of the guys I was sitting with).
As halftime approached, a group of college girls walked up the stadium stairs and passed the group of teenage boys. For those of you who don't get out much, let me explain to you that some college girls don't wear much clothing nowadays. Styles from Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister would have been modest by comparison to what these young ladies were wearing. The four young men almost dislocated their necks watching the girls as they walked by. This is the resulting conversation:
Dad2Three: (To Friend One) "I think there are three stages to a man's life."
Friend One: "What's that?"
Dad2Three: "First, there's this stage (pointing to the teenagers who are still watching the girls)."
Friend One: "Then what?"
Dad2Three: "Then there's the stage when you're just married, and you know you can't look at girls like that."
Friend One: "OK ... what's next?"
Dad2Three: "It's the stage I am at now. When I see those girls, the only thing I can think of is WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEIR PARENTS !?!? Those little girls should get their cell phones taken away and they should be grounded for a month - maybe a year!"
Friend Two: (Laughing). "No ... you forgot the final stage. The final stage is when girls like that become deadly - because if you look at them your wife will kill you or your heart will stop."
I watched the History Channel special last week about September 11, 2001. During the program - which was one of the best I've seen - I couldn't help but ask myself exactly how much we have learned as a country since I first wrote about 9/11 a few years ago. Sadly, I believe the answer to that question is "very little."
America would like to think it was "blindsided" on that Tuesday morning when, out of clear blue skies, passenger jets flew directly into the World Trade Towers and killed nearly 3,000 innocent people. In reality, the 9/11 Commission Report proved we had considerable information indicating that this (or something like it) was coming. The events of 9/11 were not so much a failure of U.S. intelligence, they were a failure of our society to acknowledge evil.
The intelligence community knew several suspicious (and likely dangerous) characters were in our country learning to fly airplanes. In the months leading up to the attacks, our intelligence community intercepted mountains of tangible data (calls, emails, videos and public speeches by terrorist leaders around the world) that should have raised all the red flags that an attack on U.S. soil was coming - and that it involved airplanes and buildings. Osama bin Laden had announced many times that he "declared war" on America, the "great Satan." We had more than enough dots, but didn't connect them.
The exact same thing happened a decade earlier when Saddam Hussein announced to the world that he was "taking back" Kuwait months before he did it. A few weeks later, he started moving tanks southward toward Kuwait. After the tanks were in place, his "Republican Guard" troops were deployed to the area just north of the Kuwait border. After all of these things had taken place, Time magazine ran a cover story dismissing the prospect of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait - if you'll remember, everyone in the media said Saddam was "saber rattling." The Washington Post headline exactly one month before the invasion said, "New Middle East War Unlikely - Threats and Saber Rattling Abound, But Deterrents Curb Both Sides." We said it was just talk and that an invasion didn't make political or economic sense for Iraq. Yes, Saddam was merely "saber rattling" ... until he did exactly what he said he would do and invaded Kuwait four weeks later.
Today we have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran who - shortly after being elected president - told the entire world he planned to accelerate his country's nuclear weapons program to "provoke a conflict with" the Great Satan (America) and the Little Satan (Israel). He has also vowed to "wipe Israel off the map." Are we taking his threats seriously or does our government, the intelligence community and the media think he is merely saber rattling? We laugh him off as a nut-ball or comfort ourselves by saying he is merely "beating his chest" for the radicals in Iran. I believe we as a nation are - once again - in denial.
Too many people in America (and in Washington, D.C.) have a secular worldview that dismisses the fact that evil is real and has been an active force throughout history. On Sept. 11, 2001, our country was "blindsided" by an evil it did not acknowledge or understand - just as it was "blindsided" by Auschwitz, Dachau and Pearly Harbor. If you accept that there is evil in this world, you are not surprised when evil people do evil things that make little or no political or economic sense.
If you think I'm being dramatic, I'll leave you with the words Ahmadinejad spoke in Tehran in September 2005: "Is it possible for us to witness a world without America or Zionism? You had best know that this goal is attainable and surely can be achieved." He then urged Muslims around the world to prepare for the day when "our holy hatred expands and strikes like a wave." Six months later, he announced to the world than Iran had joined the "nuclear club" by successfully enriching uranium. At that time (early 2006), the U.S. intelligence community said Iran was likely "two to three years" from having nuclear weapons. Is he "saber rattling" or getting ready to give the History Channel some new material?
Homeschooling for Something That Kinda' Resembles Excellence
As we enter our 13th year of homeschooling, Wife2Me and I were recently talking about what we've learned, what we feel we did right and what we feel we did wrong. At some point our conversation turned to a book Wife2Me read about homeschooling shortly after we started this little experiment in educating our kids back in the mid-1990s.
The book, called Homeschooling for Excellence, was written by David and Micki Colfax. The Colfax's have four sons they raised and homeschooled on a ranch in California. The kids smiled as they worked the ranch, smiled as they did their school work and, eventually, all went (smiling) to Harvard.
While Homeschooling for Excellence is a great read, it puts the bar pretty high for average, run-of-the-mill homeschoolers, and Wife2Me indicated during our conversation that the book was the source of considerable self-doubt during our homeschool journey. When you're wrestling with your teenager trying to wake him up at 11:30 a.m. to start school, it can be difficult to know that the Colfax children had already completed three weeks worth of trigonometry, read 28 chapters of War and Peace, written an award-winning essay on the Watergate hearings, fixed their mom and dad breakfast, milked 224 cows and changed the oil in their dad's car (just for fun) before 11 a.m. that very morning on the West Coast.
All in all, we've done well. Our kids are thoughtful, free-thinking, fun and kind to each other. They have also been educated along the way, test well and will have no problem continuing their education in college - even if they don't attend Harvard. Talking about our experience got me thinking ... and I just might write my own book about homeschooling. It will be titled My Kids No Longer Insert Objects Into Their Noses.
I'll let you know when it hits Amazon.com. I think it will be a big hit with regular homeschoolers like us.
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