after deciding for the millionth time that i hate email communication, after feeling blindsided, after pouring myself a glass of wine and sitting in a funk on the couch, feeling totally grumpy...
...meet bruce.
a&e premiered a new show tonight, called random 1. it's two guys and a crew that travel the country, doing random acts of kindness for people. matt and i had seen commercials for this show, seen them speaking to a wavy-haired man with a prosthetic leg.
i know this man.
every day this summer, in baltimore, on my way to work, at the intersection of east northern parkway and york road, on the way to towson town center, there, along the median, was this man. he had wavy hair, an old and unstable prosthetic leg, wore cutoff denim shorts and a sleeveless shirt. every day he was there, limping along the concrete holding a sign made out of a scrap of a cardboard box that said "homeless" and asking for food. sometimes he would be joined by a dark-skinned teenager with a cooler, selling water bottles to drivers stopped at the red light in the midst of a hot, humid baltimore summer. but this man...he limped up and down the median every single day. i had to make a left turn at that corner, so i was always in the lane closest to the median. and every day he was there. and every day i pretended to fix my hair or to be looking for something in my glove compartment. i didn't know what to do. i thought about giving him money some days, but never did. some days i was relieved when the stoplight turned green. other days, i'm sure i would have convinced myself to give him something if that light had stayed red for another 15 seconds. but i never ended up doing anything except feeling bad for him and yet trying to avoid him because i simply didn't know what to do. funny...as i think about it, many of the members of the church i attended this summer had to drive by bruce to get to church - me included. the church was half a mile from where bruce stood. why didn't we as a church ever reach out to him? that puts us to shame. we all knew of this man. but none of us cared to actually know him.
this man is bruce.
matt and i recognized him immediately in the random 1 commercials. and now i'm watching these two guys work with their crew to find him a new leg and a job prospect. i couldn't even give him $5, and here these guys are driving him around, feeding him, hunting down an organization to donate a new prosthetic leg to him, hunting down construction companies that might help him find a job.
so while i'm sitting here, feeling like i've been punched in the gut by the world, feeling sorry for myself, i am now staring into the face of this man who i never helped. i feel excited that i recognize the scenery on the screen, i feel special like i "own" knowledge of bruce...and i feel rotten. i shouldn't feel excited, as if i'm a celebrity for knowing who this man is. i should wonder if he'd even have ended up on this show if people like me would have helped him as they drove by every day on their way to work.
i could have helped him in some small way. i should have.
i'm glad that these people are doing so much for him, it makes me so happy - he's being helped, even if not by me.
but i have no excuse tonight to be a grump. not at all. my own worries aren't that important.
Wow.
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