Sometimes I want to do things (to or for people) that society may find acceptable and sometimes they may frown upon. For instance, helping push a stranger's car out of the snow is acceptable. Helping someone carry their groceries, usually not, though if they are older, possibly. Buying complete strangers their dinner, sometimes can actually be ok, but normally they think you're up to something or crazy.
So today I'm walking down the street and an Eastern European woman is walking towards me. She was fairly plain. Not unattractive, not thrilling to look at. However, her hair hasn't seen a salon.....probably ever. There's really no way, in our society certainly, for me to walk over to this woman and say, look I know this guy that owns a salon (he trimmed my beard the other day), how about if we go see him and I pay to have your hair done? No strings attached. I drop you off, pay him and you never see me again. First, she'd probably call the cops as soon as I approached her. And she probably wouldn't listen to anything I said anyway. Isn't that odd? Of course it's odd that I WANT to do that in the first place, but no one ever said I wasn't odd.
Earlier, while driving, I was sitting behind a woman in a Mercedes convertible. She was smoking and threw the butt out on the street. It's EXTREMELY unacceptable for me to get out of the car, pick up the butt and throw it back in her car. Now, SHE was littering, but I would get arrested/fined for damaging her vehicle. Just doesn't seem right to me.
Ok, enough of that philosophical talk for now.
Had a productive morning at the office then lunch with Ricardo and T-Rex Tim. After lunch, I went home to use a drill-powered-drain-snake (no snickering) to unclog the drain outside my downstairs door. This is the drain that backed up and started letting water under my door while I was watching it. Manual Labor Mike (who is working on the condo building's front door) helped run the drill while I threaded the snake down the drain (again, no snickering). We actually got this crappy piece of machinery to work (I borrowed it from our maintenance guy) and we got the drain unclogged (it was a bunch of dirt).
My new cleaning lady then showed up and cleaned my condo for the first time in three months! Sure I cleaned some things here and there, but she cleaned everything. I'm so happy! It makes a huge difference having MLM out of the condo AND having it clean again!!!
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3 comments:
Philanthropy is not a bad thing...if you can figure out how to be one anonomously you can still feel good without feeling odd about being kind...
regarding the hair scenario, I don't think your impulse is strange. What is strange is that you actually have the means and I can totally envision you actually doing it. If you really wanted to, you probably could of. It's all in the presentation. For example, saying "Your hair has obviously never been professionally coiffed- behold my expertly trimmed facial hair. Get thee to the salonary!" may not work.(unless you have a camera crew with you)
But you could insidiously of sold it as a free gift sales tactic or something.
"Salonary"! Ha!! Yeah stef, I probably could have worked out a way to do it. She wasn't looking too approachable, but maybe that was her hair talking.
Bee, I don't think the anonymous thing is important to me. I just have a desire to fix shit.
The odd part is that here I am wanting to help people in certain situations and I'm not always "allowed" to do it.
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