(Odd Broad is going retro this week and bringing you one of her earliest posts. This was written in January 2007, back when I still resided in NYC...and ate bacon...)
Okay, 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 mojito-hole.
But how about an accidental good deed that mistakenly gets
noticed, or a deed that stems mostly from being mildly 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 for ages,
received terrible service, and have watched in dumbfounded stupor as the
person behind the counter 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. Does this sound insane? Perhaps it is. But truly, a strange man blowing on my breakfast sandwich kind of spoils the moment, wouldn't you agree? Allow me, if you would, to elaborate:
For
starters, I think being a crackhead must be one of the prerequisites of
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 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 with a skeptical grin. "Um, okay, I
guess?" I answered. "Well, if it catches on fire then it's your
fault, not mine," was his reply.
Well, 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 returned 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? You don't have to
try toasting it this time, it's okay."
"You don't want me to toast it?" he
asked.
"No, that's okay, you don't have to toast it." (Don't effing blow on
it either, I wanted to say.)
This interaction reminded me of the time I went
into Hale and Hearty on my lunch break. The surly girl behind the
counter slopped some chicken noodle soup into a cup and started wiping
the sides with her fingers and, well, to be honest, I don't remember the exact
details of whatever disgusting thing I imagined she'd 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. No soup for you!
I went outside and stopped in
front of the homeless woman I'd seen sitting outside of the abandoned
YWCA. "Would you like some soup?" I asked. She said yes and I gave it to
her. It wasn't a big deal because I had some leftover pizza in
the fridge at work, so 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 co-worker from the Human Resource department and he asked, "Hey, Sarah, did I just see you talking to that
homeless woman out there? What were you guys talking about?"
He'd caught me off guard. I babbled, "Oh, nothing, I was just
giving her my soup..." He looked at me admiringly and said, "You gave
her your lunch? Wow, that was really nice of you!" Of course now
everybody in the elevator was staring, trying to sneak a peek at
the Mother Theresa wannabe who'd given her lunch away to the homeless. Little did they know my actions had stemmed more out of twisted
obsessiveness than selflessness.
A lady turned to me before getting off of the elevator and said, "That was a really nice thing for you
to do." I could feel my cheeks begin 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 to bring a snack in for snack time. Do you
remember Zingers, those creme filled pastries with the yummy frosting on
top? I was a big fan of Zingers. I used to peel off the frosting layer first and
then eat the cake part second. 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 offered it to her. You know, no big woop.
The next
morning I was surprised to find a small package waiting for me in my cubby at school. Inside I found two beautiful barrettes with my name on them, a gift from
Stephanie's mother. These were some really good looking hair clips. But...what was the occasion?
I went home and showed the gift to my mom, feeling slightly guilty. Ma phoned
Stephanie's mother to thank her and listened as she gushed: "Stephanie forgot her snack yesterday
and Sarah shared hers and we wanted to say thank you!"
Now this was a conflict of morals. I had really mixed
emotions about the whole situation. I mean, let's face it, I'd given
her the frosting off of my Zinger. This wasn't a beautiful,
rainbow-colored-barrette worthy deed, was it? Apparently it was. Even
at the tender age of five I knew something had been lost in the
translation, but even so, I decided to wax philosophical. After
all, the chocolate frosting on the Zinger could very well be
considered the most coveted 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. xoxo
