"Can you spare a quarter?"

“Can you spare a quarter?”

By: Michael Kane

Some say that kindness spreads like wildfire. That was never my experience growing up. When I was just a boy I watched as a man walked up to my dad outside of a train station to ask for change to make a call on a pay phone, and my dad looked the man who looked like he was down on his luck, to say I’m sorry, I don’t have any change.

           The glimmer of hope that was originally on his face when he asked my dad for change seemed to vanish and sadness replaced it. Instead of getting angry, the man mustered up a smile and thanked my dad anyway, and told him to have a nice day. I still don’t know who he needed to call or why, just that my own father who taught me to be kind to others couldn’t lend the man his cell phone or one of the many quarters that was in his pocket.

           That same image burned inside my mind years later as I witnessed day in and day out as people would drive by the men in tattered clothing holding up cardboard signs, that didn’t ask for money but said a message of peace in, “May God be with you today.”

           I will not lie and say that I didn’t ignore them and passed them by like everyone else. A man even jumped in front of my car on an onramp as I was accelerating, and was made to stop abruptly by his desperate cries for money. I waved him off of the road and I went on my way and didn’t give him a second thought.

           It wasn’t until one day that I saw Chris standing on the edge of the off-ramp as I was in a meeting that my life had changed. I saw him as I exited the highway and looked at him without thinking of how desperate he was, or what his story was. I didn’t care. My meeting was at a building that was right next to the off-ramp. I noticed that it started to rain and I looked out the window and I saw him standing in the rain steadfast. I should have been paying attention to my meeting, but I kept looking out at him. I looked away for just one moment and looked back and he had disappeared.

           Suddenly all of my inaction and ignorance to these people began to sting deep inside of me. I drove home that day thinking of nothing other than him, and wondering where he’d gone. I started to look for him every day, after weeks of seeing him and he was nowhere to be found. Until one day after a fundraising event where I wore a three piece suit with a bow tie and shinny black shoes. I got off of the highway and low and behold, there he was. Holding his sign and wearing the same blank expression of despair that I had seen many times but drove past. I rolled down my window and I saw another man across the way also holding a sign. I asked him, are you hungry, at which he replied, yes. I told him I’d be right back.

           I drove about a mile down the road to the Little Caesar’s Pizza, where I purchased two $5 hot and ready pizzas and four bottles of water. I got in my car and headed back to the men. I pulled my car into a parking lot next to the off-ramp and wearing my suit and bow tie and delivered the pizza and two waters to the first man. He looked at me, and said “I didn’t think you were coming back,” at which I replied, “I guess you were wrong.” He put down the sign as I handed him the pizza and the two waters, which he laid down by his sign. He extended his hand to me with gray worn out fingerless gloves, which I took in my hand and grasped it tightly.

           This happened at evening rush hour as many cars were stopping at the end of the off-ramp to make their way home and merge with traffic. There must have been hundreds of people that saw me deliver that pizza, and the other pizza to the other man, which I learned that people called him flip, for reasons that I didn’t know. He too was gracious and shook my hand for all of the world to see.

           I left the two men to their pizza’s which flip offered me a slice, which I declined and told him to enjoy. I made my way home thinking about how such a small act of kindness that cost me $15 could help two people that were in need. After that I kept finding reasons to take cash out and use cash for purchases so that I would have a few spare dollars on me to help out who and where I could.

           The next time I saw him, I rolled down my window and handed him a five. He stopped me and told me that he really appreciated the kind gesture of buying he and Flip a pizza, and that they did not selfishly enjoy every piece, but together walked to the homeless shelter where they shared their pizzas with others in need. A wave of a feeling that was new washed over me, as I realized that one simple act of kindness not only helped two men, but several.

           I found myself getting high on helping him with a few dollars now and then and always looked forward to seeing him. One day it was late and I found myself without even a dollar in my pocket, because my bills had been paid and it was two days to pay day. I headed to the off-ramp not expecting to see him, and then there he was. I recognized the tall fit man with brown eyes and brown hair and reasonably kept beard. My headlights shone on him as I moved down the ramp. I rolled down the window, and apologized that I had nothing to give him today, but offered to get him a pizza anyway, because I knew I could afford that, because that was probably what I was eating that night.

           Instead of him taking me up on that, he instead asked for a favor, which blew me away. He asked for a ride to a town that was nearly an hour away, because he and his girlfriend had been offered a place to stay there. I paused for a moment and thought back to my dad not sparing a quarter, then I looked him in the eye and hit the unlock button on my car. I said, “hop in.” He grabbed his thing and came around to the passenger side and stretched his long legs into my car. This was when I finally found out that his name was Chris, and how he came to be on the side of the highway off-ramp.

           He told me that he was a locomotive engineer for the company that was based in the town, and was trying to get off of the engine he had just driven a two day ride from the coast, when the engine shifted and he fell backwards from the top of the steps to the ground nearly ten feet below, shattering his pelvis and three discs in his back. He told me that thankfully the company had excellent insurance and covered all of his medical expenses and lost wages while he recovered. He then told me that after the lengthy recovery he still had to be on pills for the pain, which the company then saw as him having an addiction, which he admitted, he slightly did but had been clean for years at this point.

           He was thankful that his stock options and retirement were kept by the company in trust for his kids, which they could use to pay for college. He then explained that the “addiction” and the loss of the job sent his ex-wife over the deep end, at which point she kicked him out, and the image of him being an addict was all anyone in the area would see, which is why he was hoping he could find his way elsewhere and get his girlfriend out of the situation she was in, living in her ex-boy friends house, because she had no where else to go.

           I drove him to said house, where he went inside and I waited for nearly half an hour before he came back out and told me that the place where they were to stay had rescinded their offer because someone else got there first. He thanked me again for the offer to drive him, and told me he would see me later.

           However I never did see him again. I would look for him every day on my way home from work and every day, a vacant spot where he normally stood. I hoped for the best, that he found his way to where he wanted to be, and that he and his girlfriend were happy.

           It wasn’t until about two weeks before I was getting ready to move from the area that I came down the ramp to see someone standing where Chris normally would. It was Flip. He told me that Chris found his way to move himself and his girlfriend to another area, and he got a job stocking shelves in a grocery store, which afforded him the ability to live in a low income housing unit, which was better than the streets or the shelter. He also told me that I was all Chris ever talked about, about how he had seen me many times, but it wasn’t until I brought them pizza that he saw a change in Chris. He saw the hope grow in his eyes and he started talking about improving himself and his situation.

           Flip thanked me for caring. He said that others were trying to do what Chris had done and try to make better of themselves where the system had failed. He had even reached out to family to make amends where he had done wrong. I told him that I was moving away to be closer to family. He asked to shake my hand, and grasped it with both hands. He looked me in the eye and said, “No matter where you go, hold onto this spirit of caring. So many people don’t, and it’s a rare gift that you do. Not really a gift to you, but to others that you care for. To them, it could mean their lives.”

           I went to hand him the $20 I had been saving in my wallet, and as I pulled it out, he refused me. I said, “you need this more than I do.” He again denied, and told me I already helped him more than the money would by caring about him and others. I thanked him for the compliment and began to drive away and dropped the 20 out of the window as I drove away and told Flip I’d see him around. I watched in the rearview mirror as he bent over and picked it up, he dusted it off, put it in his pocket and walked away from the off-ramp, leaving the sign behind.