So Im barely awake this morning, drinking my coffee and reading on the couch, and I get a knock on the door. Its a man with Cheers for Children, a local non-profit organization that delivers groceries and toys to needy families and their kids for Christmas. They tell me theyre here to drop off a box for the neighbors upstairs but the neighbors arent home so they want to know if they can leave it with me. Of course. Now, so you know, our upstairs neighbors have given us nothing but grief this year. Theyre a large extended family of about 12—seven of them children—all living in a two bedroom apartment. And theyre LOUD. Like, we’ve-been-sleeping-with-earplugs-in-for-a-month-and-still-have-trouble-sleeping loud. They play basketball inside. They ride skateboards inside. They scream. And its constant; as long as theyre home, it feels like Amanda and I live at a circus. I wont pretend its not the most annoying thing in the world. Weve complained to the maintenance team, the management, and directly to the neighbors, all on multiple occasions. Anyway, the man that dropped off the box said the people that get these have to qualify by being a certain level below, or just a few percentage points above, the poverty line, which our neighbors do. Now I’m looking at this box thinking, c’mon. Couldn’t my next interaction with these guys have been a little less humbling? A little less Hallmark Christmas movie-y? A box with groceries and toys is being delivered to the neighbors that I haven’t said more than ten words to this year—five of which have been, “Can you please shut up?”—and now I’ve suddenly been cast as Scrooge. The guy who delivered the box was my three ghosts, and this family… they’re my Bob Cratchit. And now, in some awkwardly poetic way, I have the privilege of delivering this box to them. I have the privilege of swallowing my pride and my, well… privilege, and saying Merry Christmas. I’m honored.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 17:52:32 +0000
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