Good Day..(for ducks);
The weather kept me in to day so not much is new.
Hello everyone, I spent most of yesterday and last evening with Rachel, we had a lively time, and I even got to go to McDonalds for the first time in..?? Ha, I actually can't remember when. She had 95 cents in change that she had been saving to give me and was insistent that I have some money in case I needed anything, I told her we would spend it on her at the dollar store, and she says "No Daddy that money is for YOU!!", what an incredible little girl she is. We were catching the bus by Johns Hopkins, and this kid-white, mid teens, soiled ragged baggy clothes, stuttering and shaking- comes up on a bicycle and stammers out that he had not eaten for a day and a half, and could we help him,(now he WAS probably homeless, but I am pretty sure that drugs played a main role in his story, even so the kid was a mess), Rachel looked at me and tugged on my hand and whispered "Could we give him some of the money?", and I gave him all the coin in my pocket, a buck and a half or so, and she and I got on the bus and talked about homeless people and being poor, (at a level she could relate to of course), and she comes out with, "Ha'Shem wants me to give my money to people who don't have anywhere to live because I do"....,and goes on to tell me about "the Mitzvah of Tzedukah"!, This is a 5 year old who does NOT go to one of the orthodox schools where this is indoctrinated into their thinking before it is able to be comprehended, so it is ritual with no meaning, this is a kid who has heard about the concept of charity and made a decision to give to the needy. She's not yet 5 years old, and if it sounds like I'm proud and doting over my daughter...damn right! It is people with this kind of mindset, who give me hope, and help me keep my head above the sea of sh*t that I at times feel I am mired in. Rachel said to me "Daddy if people help you, then I should help people too, then when they have money, they can help people because one day someone might help me"....She'll be 5 in May!...
At the other end of the spectrum....On the bus was a woman about 28, her 15 year old daughter, and HER 1&1/2 year old son, the baby started to cry, he was tired and it turned out later that he had pinched his hand badly in the stroller (that was not folded up and placed to the side, but left to block the WHOLE aisle..but that's another rant!), and the mother starts yelling at the child to "shut up or she'll beat him", and things such as, "you understand me, and don't try to fake me out",..the grandmother starts yelling at the daughter, and says "don't let him get away with that, slap him upside the head", violently stuffs a pacifier in the poor childs mouth, and then..SLAPS HIM UPSIDE THE HEAD!!, all the while yelling into her cellphone about how the POLEECE kicked her door in because her son had a warrant out on him for shooting someone, and she was trying to hold them off so he could sneak across the roof, and how the person he shot deserved it because he had 'disrespected' her son by not lying in court and taking a charge for him.??????..well it turns out the baby..remember him..had a smashed and possibly broken finger, from being thrown around in the stroller... I've got no solutions or other answers to tell my daughter about what and why...other than...some people are not nice..and some are "not healthy" in their minds...
Gotta Go...closing time.............Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment