Challenges of Being a Do-Gooder

 

by Pa Rock

Social Experimenter

As a rule I don't do New Year's resolutions because I don't like the inevitable feelings of guilt that arise when I can't keep  simple promises to myself.  This year, however, on more of a whim than anything else, I decided to try one.  I chose something that sounded relatively simple and would be as much of a benefit to others as it would be of benefit to my self-esteem.  I decided that this year I would perform at least one random act of kindness a day.

Now, one week into this noble experiment, I am presenting a public accounting of how things are going.

The major learning that I have taken from this endeavor so far is that finding an act of kindness to perform is no simple matter, especially for people like me who tend to stay close to home.  (I often go several days in a row getting no further from the house than the chicken coop or the barn.)  As the sun was setting on January 1st, for example, I realized that I had squandered the first day by not doing anything kind for anybody.  Not wanting to give up on Day One, I grabbed my credit card and made a small on-line donation to the American Civil Liberties Union.

On January 2nd the opportunity to do something for someone else appeared in the yard.  I was sitting by the front window typing when a hard-luck neighbor came walking down the lane lugging what appeared to be an 18-pack of Busch beer in bottles in his right hand.  (This is a fellow who normally drives by the house a couple of times a day on his riding lawnmower pulling a wagon filled with scrap that he sells in town.  Once before he had pulled into the drive just as his mower ran out of gas and asked if I could take him to town to fill his gas can.  I had taken him and even paid for the gas.  That was the only time we had ever talked prior to January 2nd, but he made a point of always waving every time he went by on the mower.)

But this time he was walking, and, as he sat the beer down on the lawn next to the road, I also realized that he was dog-tired.  I stepped outside and asked if he would like a ride home, and he immediately accepted.  (I'll call him Tom - not his real name.)   On the way to Tom's house, which was about a mile-and-a-half from my own, he told me some of the history of the neighborhood, and said that he lived in the original house in the area,  When we got there I could see that it was very small and very old.  Tom said that the ceilings were all six-feet, and that there had been no electricity when the house was first built, so all of the electric lines were now stapled on the outside of the interior walls.  

Significantly, Tom did not offer me a beer for bringing him home.

The next day the same fellow again offered me the opportunity to be a do-gooder.  He had told me the day before that his mower had a broken belt and he was waiting on a new one to arrive in the mail.  On this day, January 3rd, he was again walking, this time toward town.  Having some available time in my busy schedule, I walked out into the yard and offered him a ride, which Tom was quick to accept.   When Tom got in the car he told me that he was headed to Walmart to pick up his medications.   Walmart is on the far side of town, and I have not stepped inside of a Walmart in over thirty years, so I realized that I would be sitting in the parking lot for an extended period of time while Tom stood in a line to get his medications.

I let him out in front of the door that he said was most convenient to the pharmacy, and told him to stand in that same spot when he was done so that I could see him.  Then I looked for a place to park where I could watch that spot, and, finding none, I spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes slowly driving through the parking lot and observing Walmart shoppers in their natural habitat.  (If you have ever wondered who Trump voters are, go sit in a Walmart parking lot and become enlightened!)

Finally Tom emerged from the store, but instead of carrying a small sack of prescriptions, he was again lugging an 18-pack of Busch beer in bottles!  Tom said that the pharmacist had told him that a friend had already picked up his meds.  I hauled him home, and again, no beer was offered.

On January 4th I spent 59 minutes and 7 seconds listening to a very unhappy person complain about a life situation.  The following day I dried and folded someone else's laundry and put a dollar into a collection bin for the Ronald McDonald House.  January 6th presented no obvious opportunities for an act of kindness, so I made another small, on-line charitable donation - this time to Habitat for Humanity.   And yesterday, the final day of the first week of January of 2023, I made the most pitiful offering thus far to the Gods of Charity by pushing an extra cart from the parking lot into the grocery store.

What sounded like a worthy and achievable goal for the New Year is proving to be more of a challenge than I ever anticipated - but I resolve to keep trying!