So I was at a local gas station, snagging a quick bottle o’ caffeinated joy on the go. There was a woman at the front of the line, counting out change, much to the obvious annoyance of the cashier and other folks in line. I wasn’t sure what was going on exactly, I was too far back in line.
Once I got closer to the front, the cashier and others were still talking about it. The woman was pre-paying for gas (most places now force you to pay your cash up front or swipe a card, pretty much the norm). She bought 78 cents worth. By the time I understood this, she was driving away… I would’ve filled her tank had I known what was going on.
What struck me most was how mean and nasty everyone in the store was being. “She paid mostly in pennies, can you believe it?” Ummm, last I heard, pennies were still legal tender in our country. “Where does she think she’s going to go with 78 cents worth of gas?” Home would be my guess, or off to work at some piss-poor paying job in our generous town.
This whole scenario bothered me so much that I jotted down what I saw of her car’s tag in hopes that maybe someday soon when I hit the lottery, I can find her and fill her tank with gas and her cabinets with food for a year, ease her burdens. I’ve been there. I’ve been the person who has paid for gas with a handful of change just to get to my crappy job waiting tables, so maybe on the way home from the crappy job I could go nuts and put a whopping $2 worth of gas in the car.
I have had no place to live at a point in my adult life. I have slept on the floor of the place where I worked, leaving like everyone else at quitting time, only to sneak back a few hours later and sleep on the cold tile floor. I have rationed out slices of bread until payday, and even let go of being a vegetarian at my poorest because bologna was almost always ‘buy one get one free’ at the local supermarket, and two packages of bologna would go a lot further than the broccoli I could buy for the same amount of money. I remember when a dog bit through my hand, leaving a hole that required an emergency room visit, I had to negotiate and wheel and deal with the pharmacy to get them to let me split my prescription for antibiotics into small doses so I could pay for them every couple days.
It doesn’t matter why she could only pay for gas with the change clutched in her fist. It doesn’t matter if she’s on drugs or her husband drank their paycheck or she’s lost her job or her child had a medical emergency and they spent all their money at the pharmacy. What matters is that she’s another person, someone with a story, someone’s child, possibly even someone’s mother. How dare another human being look at her and mock her for doing the very best she could at that moment in time.
People disappoint me in their meanness, their callousness. Maybe I’m too sensitive, I dunno, but the ugliness of the human heart frightens me.
I am beginning to believe that there are many, many, many more callous people than there are good in the world. I too have been in that position and by being in “that” position you hold enough shame and guilt upon your own shoulders then to have someone cast out an ugly glance, grumbling or all in all hideous comments. 100 pennies do still equal a dollar those that remember that are usually the ones that work the hardest. Thank you for a reminder to slow down, give thanks, be courteous to others 😉 You rock Kat-O!!!