Hard Truth 216: It’s Not All Bad

The day after my birthday, I took the bus to the theatre for my show that night. Handily enough, the stop where I transfer busses has a wonderful little Mexican bakery on the corner. Each time I step inside, a few things happen:

1) I understand adult-onset diabetes, and

2) I’m reminded of what’s possible.

That night, I stepped inside because my birthday celebrations this year did not yield cake. I just wanted a little piece of cake to say happy birthday to me  and lovingly snarf on the bus en route to my show. I spotted the piece of cake and put it on one of the metal trays you use to gather what you’re buying. I took it to the register. While she rung it up, I whipped out my debit card to pay.

The clerk stares at my card when I hand it to her. “No cash?” she asks?

I look. I never fucking have cash. Mostly because it’s easier to spend plastic money and it doesn’t end up in the washing machine.

I had a dollar.

The clerk tells me that it’s $1.50 and as I’m ferreting through my bag, this older Hispanic woman next to me standing with her son hands over $0.50.

No, no, no — thank you. I’m sure I have change in here somewhere.

And she just smiles. “Esssokay.”

I look at her, disbelieving. I say happy holidays. Thank you.

I take my cake in it’s tiny brown paper bag and head outside to wait for my next bus, marveling at the kindness of a woman who would have, most certainly, spent that $0.50 somewhere else on something she needed later that evening.

The bus came around the corner, but its progress on the turn was made more difficult by an old minivan parked in the bus lane.

Parking in a bus stop area in Chicago is a big no-no. Tickets get handed out and bus drivers, rightfully so, are assholes about it.

The bus driver parks the bus at the bus stop, climbs out, walks to the car and pulls out his cell phone. I hear him talking to parking enforcement.

I walk up to him –

“Sir? That’s my housekeeper’s car. She drove us here and she’ll be right out. I’ll run right inside and get her.”

Honestly, I had no fucking idea whose car that was, but I was betting since there were multiple people inside that bakery buying piles of baked goods, it belonged to one of the women in there.

He told me to “hurry the hell up” and I ran inside and said that if someone owned the minivan right there that the bus driver was calling parking enforcement and needed to move ASAP.

And right then and there, the woman who had handed me $0.50 smacks her son on the chest and says, “Ay!” She and he grab their boxes and shuffle outside and I follow. I jog to the van, hold their packages while they get the sliding door van-thing open and yell thank you to the bus driver. They load up, say gracias, and they drive off to wherever with whatever was in those boxes.

The bus driver glared as I boarded. I went to the back of the bus and lovingly snarfed my tiny Mexican birthday cake…which had turned out to be 33% gift.

8 days later, I’m still struck by someone who had much less than me giving me money — even though it was only $0.50. When it happened, I had no way to thank her except to say thank you.

And today, I’m reminded that we can do good things for one another and it doesn’t have to be such a grand gesture.

But there’s another thing I’m reminded of — and it’s today’s hard truth.

It’s not all bad.

We’re a country in the midst of the biggest shit show of a Presidential race we’ve seen, wondering just how many more nonsensical, racist, and xenophobic comments are going to pour out of the clown car carrying the candidates.

Each day, people are beaten, those we’ve trusted to protect us are brought into question, another mass shooting happens, lives are senselessly lost, and some shit that we can’t explain away happens.

Again.

But it’s really not all bad.

It’s just that the bad news and bullshit comments get more air time. And that’s because trolls are good for ratings.

Shitty people doing shitty things give us permission to talk shitty about them, letting us release the valve on all this frustration we carry around with us about the world we live in each day.

Shitty thing get clicks — because god knows, we love a good (and even a not-so-good) train wreck.

And to fight through this, we share memes laden with equally shitty grammar and usage in the hopes that we might find a laugh and leave behind the shittiness of the world that the media’s turned up to 11 for a moment.

But it’s not all bad.

In fact, I find more bad in social media than I find anywhere in the real world I live in each day.

And we have a choice.

We have a choice to share the shitty things, becoming one of the many yelling voices adding nothing to the conversation.

Or, we can make another choice.

We can hand $0.50 to someone in line at the bakery because we can.

We can hold a door. Make eye contact. Smile. Tell the lady on the train we like her boots with ducks all over them. Not scowl at the person who’s sleeping on one side of the subway car, taking up 4 seats.

We can do those things. But it’s a choice.

Just like it’s a choice to be shitty and give the shitty stuff more bandwidth than it deserves.

Our nation doesn’t have a Muslim problem or gun problem. We have a mindset problem.

We’ve become afraid of everyone and feel we have to fight against everything.

But we don’t have to be and we don’t have to.

It’s not all bad. We just tend to surround ourselves with people who want to be part of the machine pumping bad shit out. We get to be a part of something — a shared sentiment. A concurrence.

But there’s more good than we realize and that’s because there’s more good than we share.

So today, share something good with me. You never know — your one good thing might bring a smile to a stranger’s face.

And that’s a pretty fucking good thing if you ask me.

Breaking the cycle of bad — because we’re the ones who built it.
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OR

Something something clown car of Presidential candidates and why we like to share bad news.
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If you want to read more good news, this piece from Buzzfeed today had me crying the good tears in my coffee.