Good Deed Gone Wrong

There is a slight chance that I killed a homeless person. I said SLIGHT chance. I probably didn't...at least I hope I didn't. Okay, here's what happened:

We had to go to Abilene today to drop off one of Lauren's 24 hour urines and to have some blood work done on her. After we finished we were at a light and saw a homeless man in a wheelchair. He had no legs and looked half blind. We felt really sorry for him so we decided to give him some money. I tried to talk Brookie into getting out and giving it to him before the light changed because he couldn't walk to my car and he was too far up for me to reach him. Lauren was appalled and said that he might grab her and run away.

I pointed out that it is incredibly hard to run away with someone when you have no legs, but after hearing Lauren's protests Brookie refused to get out. I was about to put the car in park and do it myself when the light changed to green. I had no choice but to leave, so I slowed down as I passed him and tried to put money in the hat he was holding out. Unfortunately the wind caught it and blew it out into the street behind me where it somehow stopped right in the line of traffic and sat there wiggling in the wind as if daring him to retrieve it.

I didn't see if he actually wheeled himself out into the oncoming cars, but he was rolling that direction rather quickly when I drove off and lost sight of him. The kids were all upset with me. Tre yelled out, "That was MEAN Aunt Sissy!" I told him that it was an accident and that I was just trying help. For the next few miles I fretted and fretted over the man saying, "What if he was killed? What if he didn't see the oncoming cars and rolled right in front of someone and got hit. Maybe he'll lose his arms too. Then he'll have no limbs at all and it will be all my fault!"


Finally Lauren said, "Mom the man was blind and had no legs, surely he wasn't unlucky enough to be born stupid too." Hopefully she was right because if he was unlucky enough to be blind, cripple AND stupid, he was probably unlucky enough to get hit by a car and it would have been all my fault. I'll have to watch the news tonight and see if they mention a homeless man being involved in a hit and run.

Next time I'm playing it safe and I'll throw out some food. Something heavy like a burger or a bucket of chicken...

Oh that reminds me of a quick story! When Dave was coaching at he took a group of girls to the state golf tournament two years in a row. They were a great group of kids. He really enjoyed coaching them. I'll never forget the first year he took them to Austin. We were sitting at a red light in a suburban clearly marked with our school name when one of the girls rolled down her window and they all started throwing packages of donuts and snacks at some people beside the road. Dave turned around and said, "What in the heck are you girls doing? Stop that!" The girl closest to the window turned to him and said, "What? We are just feeding the homeless people." Dave quickly corrected her by saying, "Those aren't homeless people! That's a bus stop!!"

Oh. My. Gosh.

We laughed sooo hard over that one. You should have seen the puzzled looks on the faces of the people waiting for their bus and the embarrassed look on the faces of the sheltered girls in the car with us. It was classic.

Of course I have no room to laugh now. At least they didn't murder anyone.