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alive
September 2009 
lunch
Posted on Apr 24th, 2007
by 
Donan
Donan
I have seen her around for years. I know her stories and her scams. Always the same--she’s not really from Loudon and the dollar she asked for would never get home. At night, the serpentine belt on her car is broken...it has been for at least four years.
I used the last four minutes on my meter to buy her a meal at the closest restaurant. I told her to get whatever she wanted…She asked if it was too expensive to get a footlong. I bought cookies too. She did not want chips.
“Are you sure?”
“No upper teeth,” she said.
She held out her hand in thanks and I shook it and left hastily in the hope that I would not get a ticket--off to work the measly few minutes that this meal would cost me.
“Good deed of the day,” my friend said as we walked towards the car.
“No. Just a deed.”
Access: Public
Are we legion, Donan. Sometimes I wonder. They can spot me clear across a parking lot and wave , grinning as they hurry or run for god's sake to catch me. Years ago when I worked for the county in a downtown office folks would approach me unaware of anyone else on the street. On days when I had no change or bills for that matter, I would skulk along stooped over like a bear, dodging cars as I hustled to mine. My son laughed and said, “it's like Dawn of the Dead, Dad.” Once a woman stopped me on a crosswalk and wanted $300 for a new mattress because her back was killing her. Deed-I-do sang Donavan. Deed-I-do.
To me what was presented was opportunity that i accepted. What srikes me now is that the important thing given was not a meal, but a ten minute or so portion of mutual respect and friendship.
the first thing that really got to me and touched me was the beauty in your writing, Donan. what a gifted writer you are!!! just lovely.
I love your mattress-story, Ron - left me wondering whether you bought her one!
:)
mmm, I loved this dear Donan.
How little it takes ( even a mattress! ).
My story is Balaram. He lived in Dharamsala, at the corner of the alleyway to my and David’s lodgings. One of his legs missed a foot, his hands were wrapped in dirty bandages, exposing fingers of uneven length and shape. His right cheek was eaten away. He was a big man, nevertheless, always smiling. He said ‘hello madame’ everytime I walked by and dropped a rupee in his tin. One day, as I was reaching into my purse, he said with a vengeance quite unlike him, “NO madame! No!” I must have looked a bit shocked because he beamed at me and pointed towards our hotel. “Mister” he grinned. I then realised that David had passed by before me, and had already put a coin in Balaram’s tin. Oh god, my heart. I hugged him, leprosy and all. After that he flung his tattered arms wide open whenever I passed by, and refused any more coins. We hugged instead. And just who is the doer of “good deeds” in this story? Not me.
I thought I'd jump back in here for an anecdote. There was a guy I called the mad hitchhiker who waited at the main intersection downtown here. When the light turned red he would race out into the stopped traffic and begin frantically rapping on windows up and down the rows. When he got to me I gestured for him to get in. He put both hands on the dash, eyes straight ahead, like he was on the ride of terror at an amusement park. He pointed west , my direction as well. Mostly made small talk as he released a little bit. About six or seven miles later he jumped out at a major intersection, crossed in front of me into oncoming and began hailing traffic heading back downtown. A few days later I found myself driving west with him again. This time I took him home. Two women strolled across the lawn as he raced by them. Nary a glance from either woman. A few weeks later a friend i'ded him over lunch. Dennis was his high school class valedictorian. Went off to Korea and returned “shell-shocked” as they used to say. The two women were his sisters. Sandra asked who is the doer of deeds, good or otherwise. Sometimes it feels like there's just goodness there, no doer or doee. That's all. As Ram Dass said, “It's the only dance there is.”
Gabriele–thank you so much, that is lovely of you to say…and Sandra, so touching a story made my day more beautiful and i have found myself so very grateful for everything.
I agree, Ron; no doer, no do-ee. And i am not even certain that in those rare moments, such as that which Sandra describes, for those who see with compassion, there is even a deed–for that would seem to require volition and i am not so sure there is ever a choice even if the mind might raise the question.
When I was seventeen and on a rather romantic mountain hike with my then girlfriend, a man, both drunk and high, fell off of a 150 foot cliff and landed on a ledge fifteen feet in front of us. He was alive but only just and things did not look good initially. I managed to get him breathing–that or he simply started on his own–but it did not sound the breathing of someone who will make it; there is a difference. Jo was standing behind me screaming at the gruesome sight and i worried that she might fall off the ledge herself, she was so panic stricken. I walked her to a wider place, calmed her, and turned my back to work on the fallen man. Within a few minutes the spectators began arriving down the trail. The man was in shock and i had already used my shirt to clean him up a bit and it was now in use keeping his neck as immobile as possible…i needed another to warm him and i asked the shirt off of an onlooker's back. Well dressed, in his early 20's–I have not seen such as this since–he refused. I commanded and he refused again. Then my hysterical girlfriend, standing next to him, took her shirt off and stood there, sobbing, in front of everyone while her shirt slowly turned red with the blood of a stranger. I haven't thought of it in years, but it is in these rare moments, when nobility shines, that we truly know what humanity can be…
(i do not know if he survived, but he regained consciousness and we loaded him into a rescue cage and carried him up the mountain to a waiting ambulance)