Forgot to Mention It

...but I was at Hopeful Parents yesterday. Not as a particularly hopeful parent, but as a bearer of weight managing to lift hands over keyboard, anyway.

Still Unshod

May the real me - in new or old boots - return soon (that's hopeful, isn't it?)

7 days

Just 7 days left to enter the contest described in the previous post. You know you've been thinking about it - submit your idea! Even if you don't think it's the prize-winning concept here, your idea may inspire someone, somewhere to act on it anyway.

Entries will be judged the week of the 16th. At some point that week, judges Catriona and Addison will announce the winner right here on FJC. The winner will find out his or her prize (additional to having the cool 50$ dispatched in their heartfelt and impactful way) and arrangements will be made for the big FJC Interview with a Winner! echo echo echo...

Game still on for 7 more days.

Contest: a Long Short Story Made Longer

Remember this?



Unlikely you do by looking at it as I just took the photo today. But the uncovering of this curse and prize last February was detailed in a long short story here:

Wind and Dry Ground

The phone rang on my way out to take Addie to school this morning. And so the story is still being told. Will you write the end?

"Hello, this is officer something-or-other. I'm not sure if you remember me, but you brought in a 50 dollar bill that you found. No one has claimed it, so now it is yours."

No I don't remember you, I thought, but I remember bringing in that bill 8 months ago. I remember being disappointed as I waited weeks for your call to tell me the owner had claimed it, that it was back where it belonged. When I accepted that no such call would come, I imagined (unjustly, in hindsight) the impromptu pizza lunch the officers and staff must have enjoyed. And then I just forgot about it. Now it is mine? No. It never was.

Because of the integrity and follow through of Officer I-did-not-properly-note-his-name, the softened, faded cash is in my foster care for now, though. I don't know if there was really an older woman rendered powerless by the wind, a boy who in his cautiousness about spending had to confess to carelessness having lost it, a mother too preoccupied with the diagnosis of her child to grasp that a half hour's worth of speech therapy for her daughter just wriggled from her wallet. But things like that happen every day. And this 50$ can replace a divot somewhere.

Where?

Here is the contest - whomever comments with the most impactful way to put this tattered bill to work for someone who needs it, wins!

I need both your idea and your quantitative and qualitative reasoning on why it would be the most fruitful soil to plant 50 bucks in. That is to say - I want to hear from both your left brain and your heart (and if you know me, you know I have no qualms about shushing factual rationale if it doesn't defer respectfully to the heart).

Rules:
*Must be judged by my daughters and myself as a somewhat original idea (donating it to well known charities would certainly be impactful, but let's go off the beaten path here)
*Must not require a ton of time on my part (full plate, cup and bowl right now, my apologies)
*Must be submitted here in the comments section by November 15th, 2009
*No limit to the number of submissions per person

The winner will receive a prize yet to be determined, the satisfaction that the money will be applied as he or she prescribes, and the deserved claim to end the story in the first person. He or she will also be featured in an interview here on Farmer John.

(Yes, I considered adding it to the over 16,000$ that Michael raised for Special Friends Foundation over 2 marathons, but I know that you all can think of other precious directions in which to divert this modest measure.)

Ask your kids what they think, your co-workers, your grandmother, your tailor...have them submit their ideas on their own or swipe the ideas without telling them about the contest - your choice.

Let's see how this story ends and maybe another one begins with the receipt of a dirty old 50$ bill.

Game on.

See

Pinprick slanted rain spears serve as a smoky filter, not exactly obscuring view, but at least smudging the edges of forms. After picking Addie up from school, we are close to home at an odd intersection at the end of a triangular shaped block. Pedestrians and drivers alike have an extra direction to monitor before proceeding here.

I pull up to my stop sign and make out through the rain a striped hat on the head of a young girl. Her backpack and lack of umbrella lead me to assume she is a high school student heading home, too cool for protective rain gear. The rain spears let up a little. Her striped hat is a woolly home-knit look, extra bunches of material piled and folded on top, her ears fold downward under the band. She holds her curly-haired head perched on a bowed neck, the way tall people sometimes do so as to not appear as tall. I can see her lips moving. She might be talking, but no one is with her. Maybe it's because of the rain, but her clothes don't seem to fit quite right. They hang as if she left before completely finishing all fasteners.

On her round, pale face, her eyebrows strain to meet each other, seemingly knit with concern. I had never seen her before, so maybe this is a natural expression. The girl pivots her head from side to side while her lips move. I think she is checking to safely cross, but the consistency and repetition of the pivot inspire some doubt as to a functional purpose for the movement.

I wait for her to make eye contact so I can assure her that I would not blow the stop sign, that she is safe to cross. She stops. Seemingly without even noticing my car nearby, she turns in a slow circle. Did she drop something? When the circle is complete, she takes a step into the street, only then realizing my idling and still car in front of her. I smile and wave her through, carefully cheerful to make it quite clear that no impatience is felt or intended.

She stops again, right in front of the car. Just past the hood of my car, her back straightens, neck extends, her eyebrows release themselves. Her hand begins to reach up, but she swiftly brings it back to her side and completes her street crossing in front of me. I watch her until she arrives at the other curb.

As I begin to turn my attention to my own safe crossing, the girl turns back a number of times, shifting her head and craning to get a good look in the car. At me. She wants to see me.

Addie kicks the back of my seat as another painful truth shoots gangly tough roots through my understanding.

This girl in the striped hat - a young woman that should be on the cusp believing that the future belongs to her, that the possibilities are endless, without a gray hair on her head, without a line on her face, without a failure under her belt - she is already accustomed to moving through the world unseen. I surprised her by acknowledging that she requires the courtesy of a safe crossing. She did not know what to make of it.

There are humans among us bearing, adapting to, and accepting a state of invisibility. I am deeply ashamed of all the hundreds of times I have could have witnessed, acknowledged, heeded, times I could have extended my human-ness to meet another's...but because I could not readily accommodate the differences, I chose instead, not to see.

I am sorry. I will choose it.

I want to see.