Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 10, 1993 TAG: 9305100295
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He seemed angry. And I was startled enough to take the card he offered.
"Smile," the little index card said, in painstakingly handwritten script. "I am sorry to bother you. I am a deaf mute. I sell this card to support my family. Will you kindly buy one? Any donation will be appreciation. I love you and may God bless you. Thank you."
Still startled, I pulled out the change I'd just received in the cafeteria and gave it to the old man. I don't remember how much it was, but it wasn't much. And it wasn't much "appreciation-ed," either. Still apparently angry, almost belligerent, the old man turned from me toward the next person leaving the cafeteria.
The other night that index card fell out of a pocket in my car door. Apparently I'd stuffed it there, then forgotten about it. And about the old man, too.
Such a cheery and optimistic message! "Smile" and "God loves you." "Will you kindly buy" one of this old man's laboriously hand-made cards?
Nevertheless, the card still chills me, even several years after it was delivered. Why? Why do both the card and its request still seem so threatening?
Clearly, that old man wasn't "sorry to bother" me at all. Certainly, he didn't "love" me. He was accosting me - and others - forcing us to respond to him, either by handing over our money or guiltily, perhaps angrily, walking away.
We aren't used to beggars these days. Oh, we've all run into panhandlers, but beggars - the lame, the crippled, the deformed, the impossibly pitiful - they no longer fill our streets with their wretched palms out, their needs impossible to meet. Our nation is so rich, so immeasurably lucky.
There, in the face of wealth and luck, that old man shouted as only he could, "I'm a deaf mute!"
We aren't used to such bald, politically incorrect labels anymore, either.
Is this the threat implicit in that old man's index card: that he and his brothers and sisters are ever with us? The lame, the crippled, the deformed, theimpossibly pitiful do not disappear from the world because we give them other, less derogatory names. The old man forced a confrontation with reality: Life is not fair.
And faced with life's unfairness, we're left with an overwhelming need for justice. Justice - which demands not the same treatment for all, but equal treatment for all.
Justice would have required me to respond to that filthy, pushy old man as evenly, as openly as I'd have responded to some neat, buttoned-down solicitor for Easter Seals or the United Fund. Not just with money - because, of course, I'd have dropped my change into a can much more readily than into that begging hand - but with my heart. And without any expectation of gratitude. No one need be grateful for justice, which is deserved.
So, there's the threat, the guilty memory. I gave that old man my change just to make him go away. I didn't want to help him at all. Shamefully, I wanted him to take his personal grief and misfortune, and disappear.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB