I heard this story on NPR and couldn’t help but think how opposite Trump’s reaction would be to the events:
WLW: I remember walking up the street Christmas Eve and I see this kid riding down the street on their bicycle and I say, ’Boy, that looks like my brother’s bike.’ I get to the house and say, ’Wayne, where’s your bike?’ And he said, ’It was down on the steps.’ I said, ’No it’s not. It’s gone.’
It’s a small neighborhood so we find out where the kid lives who has the bike and it’s a shack in an alley. Now, my brother and I, we’re going to beat this boy but my father was there and he said, ’Just shut up and let me talk.’
So we knock on the door and this old black guy comes on a cane. The house was cold; the only light he had was a candle. It was his grandson who had stolen the bike, so he calls him out. He was the same age as my brother, about ten years old. The little boy starts crying and he says, ’I just wanted something for Christmas.’ So we get the bike and we leave. We go back to my house.
My father tells my mother and she doesn’t say anything. She just starts cutting the turkey in half and all the fixings. She started packing it up. My father went to the coal yard and got a big bag of coal. And then he told my brother, he said, ’You’ve got another bike, don’t you?’ My brother said, ’Yeah…’
So we went back with food, coal — so they’d have some heat — and the bike. The little boy is just crying but the thing that moved me the most was the old man. My father gave him $20, which was a huge deal back then, and said, ’Merry Christmas.’ He said, ’Thank you,’ and then just broke down in tears.
My father was a chauffeur; my mother was a domestic, so we didn’t have a lot of stuff. And that Christmas, I don’t even remember what gift I got but I do know that made me feel better than any Christmas I’ve ever had.
I find it continuously heartbreaking that we live in a country where 30% of the people here believe, despite the vast wealth and options available to all of us, that survival of the fittest in all forms is, and should be, the ruling religion. Lives are complicated. People hurt — and it’s not always there fault. Those who are poor aren’t usually poor because they are lazy and take drugs.
Republicans want to believe the world is black and white. It gives them comfort to make examples of the less fortunate.
I always believed that the greater good in people would outshine the darkest side. Unfortunately, the darkest of souls resides in or Presidency and is making hate, hurt, and division more of a norm than kindness, understanding and empathy.
We are here only a short time. Make it count and be good to others — or get out of the way and let the decent among us set the course.