(08-16-2024, 05:48 AM)MrJesterium Wrote: NinurtaBut folks say weird, unfathomable stuff like that to me fairly often. They just come in from nowhere, drop some crazy lines on me, they sky back out into the nowhere they came from. And I never know what the hell they are talking about.
Question: Do people also come up to you asking for help?
Yes. Mostly the homeless, old people, kids, and occasionally women who have managed to get themselves into dangerous situations. Some times, even strange animals. Rarely grown men, although my neighbor often comes seeking help - sometimes water, or food, or yesterday a tool to work on his truck, and this evening he came looking for medicine for an ear ache.
I recall an old black man who came up to me out of the blue in Greensboro, NC, looking for a couple of bucks because he was a diabetic and needed to get something to eat. He was fairly old, but well dressed, and embarrassed to ask but approached me out of necessity. Instead of giving him a couple of bucks, I took him to a restaurant across the street (Tate Street), and got him a meal .Played it off that it was lunch time, I needed to eat lunch anyhow, and appreciated the company. I did that to save his dignity as much as I could.
It doesn't happen so much any more, other than the neighbor, because I don't get out and about as much.
When I was little, I had two sisters who were born with cleft palates, and I was the only one who could understand them, so I translated for them. Mom would get frustrated and exasperated, because she couldn't understand them, but my Dear Old Dad never lost patience with them. He'd ask them over and over again to repeat themselves until he could understand, and he would play it off like he was just old and couldn't hear good. They didn't know any better, so they'd just keep on patiently repeating themselves to help him out until he understood, never the wiser as to what he was up to with that hard of hearing act. I never forget that lesson he taught me without ever even knowing he taught it. To them, you see, he was not helping them, they were helping him.
Those little sisters are also why I learned to fight. Some other kids would pick on them because they couldn't talk well, and when I caught them at it, I'd light 'em up. I defended them into adulthood, long after they were able to talk properly, up until they asked me to stop, which I did when they asked.
When folks need help, they're already low enough, and there is no rational reason not to preserve as much of their dignity for them as you can muster.
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