When A Dollar Really Counts

Yesterday on my commute home, I noticed a homeless man standing next to my car holding a small cardboard sign "Please help." He caught my eye and held the sign up to my attention, and I was drawn to fish in my empty wallet. Receipts were not going to help this guy. I suddenly remembered a stash of a couple "emergency toll dollars," grabbed one, unrolled my window, and handed it to him.

The response to my handing a man a single dollar so was overwhelming, and I wished I had given more. I think he would have hugged me if he could have reached in my car. Instead, I received the prerequisite "terrorist fist jab" three times during our conversation, which spanned one very long red light.

"You never know where your angels are going to come from." "That's true," I told him. I rolled up my window. He started talking again, and I unrolled it. "You know who you look like, that Annie Frank, I've never read the book though, have you, is it really true?" "Anne Frank? Yes, that's a true story."

Christmas having just passed and having just paid for an upcoming vacation/wedding in February, we are broke. However, I am well aware that "broke" these days with two jobs, a house and two cars, is, quite frankly, lucky. I wished I thought to give the lovely man on the street the leftover apple that was sitting in my lunchbox as I drove home. As I listened to the news on the radio, staggeringly depressing global wars, economic doom and sadness, I took heart and came to the conclusion that the only thing we can do is act, locally, each in our own way. A single, tiny random act of kindness won't fix all our problems-- but millions just might.