Not really. Sometimes, a small glimpse of something in my life makes me feel really stupid about my worries. There’s a house on my way home from Mickey’s. It’s inbetween the pizza place and the notorious “crack house”. There’s a man that lives there with a motion-sensitive light outside his front door. He’s in a wheelchair. [this is going to get kinda long] I’d like to consider myself very different from the people that “feel sorry for the handicapped”. I have worked with people who were unable to live by themselves, I have a friend whose dad uses a stick in his mouth to type and send email, I learned Braille to simply communicate with someone I worked with. So, I’m walking home, all pissed off that a shift was taken from someone but her work was not replaced to cover Thursday night (making Kurt work an extra 2+ hours) and I see this guy getting into his house, with a motorized wheelchair and a dog with a red saddle-looking thing. This is immediately identifiable as one of the dogs you shouldn’t pet, by the way. Just because it was taking him longer to unlock his door and maneuver his way inside, I stopped. I wanted to ask if he needed help. He got in just fine. I feel stupid. Not for wanting to help, because that’s inherently in my nature, but for thinking that he may need help (and stopping, subsequently); like he’s never done this before. So I’m walking home, thinking, “What can I do for this guy?” (after the fact!) like he even needs anything. I consider a holiday card with a call to action incase he needs a grocery shopper, or a ride somewhere. Then I realize he probably has what he needs or else he wouldn’t have gotten this far in his life. So, again, I’m a moron who feels unneccessarily responsible. I think we should all take this moment to consider our state and realize that it’s indisputably minor compared to anything else we could be dealing with. Perhaps you already have. Perhaps I belong on the short bus.
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