Ok, so I've gathered over the years that good deeds lose some of their natural goodness when you tell people about them. Seriously, if you want your deeds to count as really really good ones, you're better off zipping your pie-hole. (Or mojito-hole, as I once heard someone call it. teehee)
But what about an accidental good deed that mistakenly gets noticed, or a deed that stems only from being a crazy neurotic and ends up earning unwanted praise and misdirected admiration? Is this type of deed not only considered not good, but double bad?
Generally I'm not a wasteful person, so I don't make a habit out of this...but there have been occasions when I've waited in line forever, received terrible service, and have watched in dumbfounded stupor as the person serving me does something so questionable that after I pay for whatever it is I'm getting, I find myself compelled to either give the thing away or throw it out. Do I sound sick? Perhaps. But seriously, a strange man blowing on my breakfast sandwich kind of spoils it, don't you agree?
Allow me, if you would, to elaborate:
For starters, I think being a crackhead must be one of the prerequisites to being hired at the Au Bon Pain near my work. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with being a crackhead, but...
The other morning before work I stopped in to pick up a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a croissant. "Do you want me to to try toasting this?" The man behind the counter asked me with this skeptical grin. "Um, sure, I guess?" I answered. "Well, if it catches on fire then it's your fault, not mine," was his reply.
Hmmm, this certainly had all the makings of a disaster. I checked my watch: one minute to go before I was officially late for work. Why had I come here again? Mama Mia.
The man went into the back for a suspiciously long time, I'm guessing to fetch my croissant. He came back and put said pastry into the toaster and then watched as it eventually went up in flames. That's when he grabbed it and proceeded to blow all over it to put out the flames.
He inspected the burnt croissant and for a horrified moment I thought he was actually going to put my eggs and bacon on it. That's when I asked, "Um, do you think I could get another one please? And you don't have to toast it this time, it's ok." "You don't want me to toast it?" he asked. "No, that's ok you don't have to toast it." (Don't f-ing blow on it either, I wanted to say.)
This reminded me of one time I went into Hale and Hearty Soup to get lunch. The surly girl behind the counter slopped some chicken noodle soup into a cup and started wiping the sides with her hands, and, well, to be honest, I don't remember the exact details of whatever disgusting thing I thought she had done to my soup. I only know I decided then and there I wouldn't be able to eat it. Even as I was paying the five bucks and change for it I knew I would not be having soup for lunch.
I went outside and stopped in front of the homeless lady I had seen sitting outside of the abandoned YWCA. "Do you want some soup?" I asked. She said yes and I gave it to her. It wasn't a big deal because I already had some leftover pizza in the fridge at work, I would just eat that instead. See? It had all worked out nicely.
I entered my building to go back into work and got into the elevator with a crowd of people. One of them was a friend of mine and he asked, "Hey, Sarah, did I just see you talking to that homeless woman out there? What were you guys talking about?"
He had caught me off guard. I babbled, "Oh, nothing, I was just giving her my soup..." He gave me this admiring look and said, "You gave her your lunch? Wow, that was really nice of you!" Of course now everybody in the elevator was staring at me, trying to sneak a peek at the Mother Theresa wannabe who had given her lunch away to the homeless. Little did they know my actions had stemmed more out of sick obsessiveness than selflessness.
A lady turned to me and said, "That was a really nice thing for you to do." My cheeks started to burn. Well, what was I supposed to say? That the girl at Hale and Hearty had gotten her dirty fingers all over my soup so I gave it away to a homeless lady because it was too nasty to eat myself?
This wasn't the first time I've been the recipient of undeserved praise and fanfare. There was that time in Kindergarten when my friend Stephanie had forgotten her snack at snack time. Do you remember Zingers, those creme filled pastries with the yummy frosting on top? I loved Zingers. I used to peel off the frosting part first and then eat the rest later. Anyways, Stephanie was sitting next to me and I noticed she didn't have a snack so I neatly peeled off the chocolate frosting and gave it to her. You know, no big woop.
The next morning I was surprised to find a small package in my cubby at school. Inside I found two beautiful barrettes with my name on them from Stephanie's Mom. These were some really good looking hair clips.
I went home and a bit guiltily showed the gift to my Mom, who called Stephanie's Mother to thank her. "Stephanie forgot her snack yesterday and Sarah shared hers and we wanted to say thank you!" she gushed.
Now this was a conflict of morals. I had really mixed emotions about the whole situation. I mean, let's face it, I had given her the frosting off of my zinger. This wasn't a beautiful, rainbow-colored-barrettes worthy deed, was it? Apparently it was. Even at the tender age of five I knew something had been lost in the translation, but still, I decided to be philosophical about it. After all, I suppose the chocolate frosting on the zinger could be considered the best part...
I guess being wrongly labeled a generous do-gooder is better than not ever having been mistaken for one at all, right?
In the end, I suppose all good deeds are probably counted: the neurotic ones, the accidental ones, and even the not as good as people think they are, but still nice all the same ones, too. So there. Stick that in your soup and eat it. Teehee.
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