Paving That Well-Intentioned Road (or Make Sure You Have Plenty of Milk)
“The trouble with doing favors for your staff is that they start to think they are entitled to them...”
“Yo. You’ve mentioned ‘favors’ like six times. I’m not doing them ‘favors’—I’m being flexible with the schedule to accommodate their lives.”
“Okay. Your flexibility has become a liability. All it takes is one person to decide that when you aren’t flexible when they want it, that your saying ‘no’ is unfair. The rules are there to be followed rigidly so that that one person can’t put your job at risk.”
“Sort of like ‘this is why we can’t have nice things’ and all that.”
“Exactly.”
✶
When I arrived on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1989, I had quite close to nothing in my perspective. I had a Bronco II in decent shape, an Optima credit card with roughly $300 of credit, no savings, no job, no address. For four months, I played my trumpet on street corners for enough scratch to feed myself and put gas in the truck while I went through the red tape of Illinois teacher certification.
My Kansas and Arkansas mentality was assaulted by more people in need than I had encountered before and my kneejerk reaction was to share what I had. In my capacity as a survivor on the street with no home but my vehicle, I was ground level daily with grinders, grifters, and bums whose industry was plying change from well-meaning people passing by.
While I had relatively little I was still one of those well-meaning people. I’d give a dollar to the guy with the cardboard sign declaring he was a veteran and needed something to eat. I’d slide a few bucks I had made playing “When the Saints Came Marching In” on Randolph Street to the dude with the story about his wife needing to go the hospital and all he needed was a few bucks for gas in the car to take her there. Every other day I’d swing into a White Hen Pantry to splash some water on my balls, ass, and armpits and snag an apple and two bagels for lunch. The second bagel was for Roy, the homeless guy who stood in front and off to the side of the joint telling people he hadn’t eaten and could they spare some change for some food?
About two months into my Bronco II residency, I showed up to get my whore’s bath. I didn’t have the cash for both bagels and, as I left for my home on wheels, Roy barked “Hey! Where’s mine?”
“Sorry, Roy, I don’t have enough for two bagels today.”
“Fuck that. Gimme that one!”
“Nah, man. I gotta eat.”
“Fuck you, white boy! I GOTTA EAT! Motherfucker holding out on my bagel. Fuck THAT!”
My grandfather loved the phrase “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s gonna want a glass of milk” but I never understood it until that moment. It made me suddenly furious that I had, in my perspective, been a good person, gifting this stranger some food three times a week only to be turned upon so viciously when I couldn’t accommodate him. I was twenty-three years old and the complexities of humanity, of income inequality, and of perpetual bigotry hadn’t become as illuminated as they would decades later so I felt personally affronted.
For a week, I was pissed off about it. I couldn’t get it out of my mind and I became angrier about it every day. I went back to my routine and, sure enough, there was Roy. He acted as if nothing had happened. To him it was a nothing burger with invisible pickles. I went in, washed up, and brought him his bagel. Instead of heading back to play, I hung around for a bit.
Roy stuffed the bagel in his pocket. A moment later he told a couple entering into the store “Can you help me? I haven’t eaten in two days and every little bit helps.” I was shocked in only that way a naive idiot is shocked when he realizes Santa doesn’t exist or love is rarely, if ever, unconditional. I watched him replay this a few more times until I couldn’t take it. The next person walks by, he declares he hasn’t eaten in two days, and I leap from my bench and yell “Check his pocket! He’s lying! I just gave him a bagel!”
From that point, I started to question every person claiming need. Was that guy really a veteran or was that just a grift? Was the other guy’s wife really in his car blocks away needing medical assistance? The more I looked for the dishonesty, the more I found it and I stopped giving. I developed that instant “No. Not today. I don’t have change,” retort and quickly walked away before even bothering to listen to the pitch.
Decades later, I comprehend my anger in a way that I was too close to before. My well intentioned sharing was transactional. I gave the guy a bagel and wanted in return gratitude and a sense of my own virtue.
✶
In 2005, a friend suddenly turned on myself and a few others (No. Not the one you’re thinking of right now). I was flabbergasted that I was being painted as this evil force in her life when my only recollection was that I had been nothing but friendly and supportive of her—she lost her phone, I gave her my old iPhone kind of relationship. It became ridiculous so I distanced myself. I decided that it was less important for me to understand how she had gone from friend to foe and more important to just stay away from it. Anyone who took her seriously wasn't a person I wanted to hang around with so it solved several problems at once.
A couple months of this went by and suddenly, it turned out that she’d been in a downward spiral and finally looked to get some help. "I recently had a breakdown and was reading a lot about abuse and that was all I saw around me. I trust your account of our relationship, though, and I'm sorry." The thing is, it wasn't that simple. After several months of shit mouthing me, I no longer trusted this person to see truth let alone see the truth of our friendship. "I trust your account of our relationship." Somehow, she's telling me that her own accounting of things said and done had been falsified and she can no longer trust her own memories. How does that happen and does it happen more often than we think?
✶
My mother is a true, on the ground, get it done, progressive. Unlike so many seen today, she’s an activist with skin in the game rather than a Twitter following for whom to virtue signal and posture. She’s started food banks in the middle of extreme poverty, sponsored Russian orphans in both money and time (including a church trip to Moscow), and worked for a volunteer program designed to assist former drug addicts get back into society.
My mother has more stories of her well-intentioned road being misinterpreted, her largesse being scandalized, and her kindness being somehow labeled as a liability than I will ever have in my lifetime.
She sent me a wall hanging once that defined her perspective on the whole conundrum and is a balance to my grandpa’s saying.
“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
~Mother Teresa”
As all self-help inspirational things, it’s easy to agree and much harder to practice.
My compression has become something like this:
Give a mouse a cookie and he’s gonna want a glass of milk. So bring some milk, motherfucker. It’s only milk.
