Why Do You Need to See Through It?

I got scammed last week.

It was 1:30 pm on carpool day at the high school and, as if on cue, it was beginning to rain. For those of you know me, you know how I feel about carpool even on the best of days. For those of you that don’t know Memphis drivers in the rain just imagine the following:

All of the worst drivers were taken from your city and magically transported to Memphis where the main corridor in town is the width of two lanes but is divided into three. And all three of those lanes are wet. And all of those bad drivers are still driving like it’s dry. And they are on their cell phones and eating Big Macs.

Knowing this, I left a bit early ahead of the 2:15 dismissal to drive east thinking I could beat the worst of the rain which was headed in the same direction. As I backed out of my driveway, I set an intention to be calm and generous. I was mostly thinking that would mean things like yielding at every opportunity, assuming the best of motives to explain any off-the-rails driving that I might witness, and just, in general, trying not to be what I don’t want to encounter on the road myself.

As I approached the stoplight that leads out of my neighborhood and onto the aforementioned three-lane-street-that-should-be-two, I noticed in the far left lane – my lane – a car with its hazard lights blinking. Standing in the median next to the driver’s side door, I could see a man on his phone gesturing…not wildly, but definitely with emotion. The car was sitting in an awkward spot at a peculiar intersection which required me to actually stop next to the disabled car so that I could make a slight left in front of it and across two lanes of oncoming traffic before I could get to the light. As I was sitting there waiting for the oncoming traffic to go by, I heard him say something and, out of the corner of my eye, noticed that he was politely motioning for me to roll my window down.

When I did, I could see that he was almost in tears and had pulled the phone away from his ear.

“Ma’am, please can you help me and my wife. We are $17 short for a tow truck and I just don’t know what to do.”  

I looked through the darkly-tinted windows on the passenger side of the car and could see that there was, indeed, someone else in the car.

Here are the things that I could have thought in that moment:

• $17 seems like a weird amount. Does he really have exactly $183 in his wallet?
• If he doesn’t have enough for a tow truck, how will he have enough to pay for any repairs? Or gas? Or whatever it is that he needs to get the car moving again.
• I don’t have any cash and I don’t have time to run to an ATM before getting to the high school.

But I didn’t think any of those things. That intention that I set as I was leaving home must have really taken hold and I extended that generosity to this man and his wife. I looked at his desperate face and said,

“You know what? I’ll run to the ATM and come right back. Just hang tight.”

As I drove toward the convenience store which sat about 100 yards away. There was a small voice in my head that said, “He’s gonna go buy booze and cigarettes with that.” But honestly, I hear that voice a lot. There are a lot of people in my city who struggle with poverty and homelessness and addiction and I get asked for help pretty frequently. The strategy which has evolved over the last 18 years is this: 

• If I have something to share, I will and if my wallet is empty, I won’t. 
• Regardless of what I give them, I always make eye contact and ask their name. 
• As I leave I say goodbye and repeat their name. 
• I always try to treat them like a person.
• I don’t lecture them about what I think they should or should not be doing with their lives.

That’s just how I have chosen to operate in my environment.

For some reason, though, on this particular day, I decided not only to ignore the voice of warning (which I instructed to “hush up”) but to make an extra effort to be helpful. I told myself that I was choosing in this instance to assume the best of someone and would accept the consequences – probably because I believed I’d never know what they were. I retrieved the cash and drove 100 yards back to the man who was still standing outside his vehicle on the phone. I pulled up behind him this time and handed him a $20 bill. There was such a look of relief and gratitude that washed over his face. I looked him in the eye and said, 

“You know, this can be an unkind town. People are in a hurry. It’s raining. They may not be nice. Just take a deep breath and know that you’ll be OK. I wish I could stay and help you, but I am headed to pick up my kids from school.”

He said thank you again and told me he was going to get in his car and call the tow truck right that second. I wished him luck and drove toward the stoplight.

As I sat at the red light with the car in my review mirror, that little voice came back and this time, she was more forceful.

You should drive the long way around the block and see if the car is still sitting there in 3 minutes.

I glanced at the clock and noticed that I still had plenty of time. The rain had stopped. I remember thinking – I guess with some other voice (which begs the questions, just how many are in there?) –

Or you could just keep driving and that way if you are a chump, you’ll never have to know for sure.

But the first voice won and I did decide to go around the block. It didn’t take three minutes though…it barely took two.  And so I was careful as I slowly rounded the curve until the intersection came into view.

The empty intersection. No car. No tow truck. Nothing.

Then I said some curse words out loud because I was pissed. And embarrassed. But I didn’t do anything. I picked up the kids and kept the story to myself. Eventually, I forgot about it.

The next day, though, I was still fuming a bit…not enraged, but not completely over it. I decided to tell my running partner what had happened and she could tell it was still eating at me. She asked me what I was most angry about and I thought for a minute before listing my grievances.

• That $20 was a tank of gas or a meal for our family.
• That guy probably thought I deserved to be treated that way. He probably told himself an unfavorable story about what kind of person I was and used it to relieve his conscience.
• But mostly, I was mad because I didn’t see through his Oscar-worthy performance.

And then she asked…Why do you need to see through it?

Then I said some more curse words out loud. Because I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I knew there must be one, though, so I repeated the question out loud a few more times (that was mostly to keep me from cursing more) and then told her I’d get back to her later in the run.

That was Friday and I still cant come up with any answer except that I don’t need to see through it. Not any more than I needed to drive around the block to prove to myself that I had been scammed. Or that I should beat myself up over a gesture of genuine kindness on my part which amounted to $20 and 10 minutes. His behavior doesn’t make me less kind and it doesn’t make me stupid and it isn't the end of the world or the end of my ability to trust other people. It doesn’t really make me anything.

Unless I let it.

I’m sure I could have taken a different approach. I could have rationalized my anger – my rightness – and let it fester into full-blown bitterness. I am really good at that. I am actually pretty thankful that in protecting my pride, I didn’t fire off some hateful Facebook post or Nextdoor warning in which I turned that man – whose actions made me angry – into something that diminished the fact that he was an an actual person. That type of behavior no longer aligns with my values which say that all people deserve to be treated as human beings regardless of how they treat me. This is just one of those moments in life where I am invited to re-examine my boundaries, live inside my integrity, and use them both to guard my sense generosity. Brené Brown calls it LIVING B-I-G.

I like the idea of living big. Much better than living angry, closed-off, and small.

The bottom line is, I can’t always know what someone does with the money I give them but once I choose to share it, it becomes their money to do with as they please. I can’t know what story they tell themselves about me nor is it really any of my business what they think. I also can’t assert truth as to any story I make up about who they are based upon a single 10-minute interaction.

And I can’t always see through it…nor do I want to. Because seeing through it may mean looking through them. And I don’t want to look through people.

I can't say for certain that I will choose to respond the same way if I am ever again faced with a similar situation. I can say for certain that if I do, I'll save gas -- and hurt -- by accepting that what I gave them now belongs to them, and skipping the trip around the block.