It turned out to be a more interesting Tuesday than usual. Granted, that’s not saying much, but still. Here are the highlights:
I met up with Kate at the Mangos beach bar at the appointed time of 3:00 p.m. She was waiting when I arrived. I ordered up a beer and chicken fingers, she had a mango juice. Our drinks arrived, we settled in, and then she proceeded to share her tale of woe.
As I understood her to say, some time back they had pawned the family trike which was their primary source of income. Apparently, this was done to finance the cost of the baby she delivered last year.
Kate said that when the pawn loan came due she was unable to make repayment in full, but worked out an arrangement to make monthly installment payments. That changed recently when the owner of the loan demanded payment in full because of their own family emergency–grandmother in the hospital if I recall correctly. Kate tearfully told me that her entire family blames her for this situation and her father says it is her responsibility to make things right. Can I please help her?
Well, that was quite a story. Presented with excellent dramatic effect and with all the elements necessary to tug at your heartstrings. But how much was this story worth?
“How much are you looking for?” I asked her.
“50,000 pesos” she responded.
It’s a good thing I was sitting down. That’s $1041.41 at today’s exchange rate. Now, I may be an easy touch when you are asking for fifty or a hundred dollars, much more than that we better be related or at least intimate. And while I do have the means to “loan” someone the amount Kate is looking for, I don’t have any desire to do so. First of all, I barely know this woman other than as a fellow Hasher and Facebook friend. I was scammed for a thousand bucks by Gemma, a woman I had dated and considered a friend. My trust in her was unfounded. And y’all read my post a couple of days ago about the $400. laptop I bought for Jhen and how that worked out. Kate looked at me expectantly with tears still in her eyes and I told her the truth.
“You’ve got the wrong person. That’s way more than I can afford. I’m not rich, I’m living here on a pension. Sorry, but I can’t help you.”
She nodded and told me she understood. The fish sticks arrived and I shared them with her (see, I’m not a totally selfish bastard). She tried one and said they were dry. Well, they are fried, of course they’re dry I thought to myself, but I shrugged and said I think they taste good. She did take the leftovers with her.
Making small talk, I asked who had sponsored her (paid the P350 entry fee) at the Hash on Monday. She told me that Troy had done so. Hmm. I said maybe you should ask Troy, he might have more money than me. Yeah, that was kind of a shitty thing to do in retrospect. But on the other hand, Troy has been known to be pretty damn generous with the gals he favors, so who knows. Anyway, she finished her juice, thanked me for listening, and left. I paid the bill and departed shortly thereafter.
Next up for me was playing in the darts tournament across the street at Alley Cats. As fate would have it, I drew Troy as my partner. Naturally, I didn’t mention my earlier meeting with Kate. She had asked me not to tell anyone and I chose to respect her wishes in that regard. Troy and I both threw well and sailed into the finals. We were waiting for the losers bracket to play out so we’d know our opponent when Troy told me he was going to meet up with Kate after the tournament. Oh, how nice. And then a few minutes later, Kate showed up at Alley Cats and joined us at our table. That was a little awkward.
It still wasn’t time to play our finals match and Kate said she had a friend waiting outside who was too shy to come in and join us. I suggested Troy go outside to talk with Kate. He did so and a few minutes later rejoined me without Kate. I didn’t ask what had happened and he didn’t volunteer any information.
We then played our finals match and kicked ass.
I went home drunk and happy with my bank account intact. I’d call that a pretty good day.
And just in case you are thinking I’m a cheap Charlie, I sent a Filipina friend $60. so she could take a Valentine’s Day trip with her girlfriends. And I gave a beggar 50 pesos. While I was enjoying my lunch outdoors at Sit-n-Bull, a young woman holding a baby asked me for money. I didn’t have any small bills on me, so I shook my head and said sorry. She kept on standing there though. Then I looked up and noticed she was breastfeeding. Damn it. I went inside and got change and handed her 60 pesos. And no, I didn’t say “nice tit”, I’m not that much of a sick bastard. It was nice though.
So, there you have it. And life rolls on.
Retitle this post as “Queen for a Day”. An old TV show from the B&W days of the 50’s-60’s. Maybe you saw it as a young boy. Apparenlty some of the girls in your local circle may have heard of this show, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_for_a_Day
I thought I’d left a comment, but I guess I hadn’t. Anyway, I’m glad you escaped a probable trap. One has to wonder, if you had asked to see the lady’s family to confirm her story, whether she’d have allowed you to do so. My guess: she’d have come up with some bullshit excuse to keep you from finding out the truth.
Wait—I did leave a comment! I remarked on my confusion about “pawning a trike” versus a “pawn loan.” If you pawn your trike, then you have cash on hand, and that cash is yours—it’s not a loan to be paid back to someone else. So what gives? How does one pawn one’s trike and then owe money? Something doesn’t add up.
Not sure what happened to your original comment, it didn’t wind up in the moderation queue.
I took her meaning to be the trike was collateral for the loan. I’ve heard of gals pawning jewelry or phones or whatever for some quick cash. Then they have a specified amount of time to reclaim that item or it becomes the property of the pawn store. Had that story used on me at least once…”I need cash to get my watch out of hock” type thing. Never heard of pawning a trike but I suppose it would work similarly…here’s some cash…I’m holding on to the trike until you pay me back…oops, can’t pay? I’m selling the trike…
Yeah, I’ve heard of guys trying to verify a story and getting the runaround. The veracity, in this case, didn’t matter to me, no way I was handing over that kind of cash!
Mark, I actually did recall watching that show as a child. Until I looked at your link to Wikipedia though I thought the host was Art Linkletter. I guess I remember him from another show in the same time frame…
But yes indeed, there are many drama queens in these parts…
All’s well that ends well I guess. Which of your regular readers couldn’t have known what your dinner date with the lady was gonna be about?
Tl;dr : you’ve attached emotions to giving money when the people who ask you for money approach this in a mechanical practical way. It’s sad if this causes you to lose sleep and question your worth as a good person. You’re a good man. And that’s coming from the same people who asked for help and you couldn’t help them. It’s the mark of a good person that they feel bad when they can’t alleviate somebody’s pain.
Elon Musk is the richest person on Earth. California has many homeless poor people. Elon Musk lives in California. How does Elon Musk sleep at night?
It’s a long journey. That you feel the need to explain and/or infer that you are a good person because after declining to part with 50000 pesos you gave some money to other needy people is the heartbreaking bit in this piece. You’re fighting on all fronts to still feel good about yourself and at the same time know that you can’t rescue everyone from their own problems. Hell,I heard that both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos don’t use their trillion dollar fortunes to bail out anybody. Otherwise I would have a piece too coz I have many problems that would take just a few millions to solve.
Kev knows you best and he’s always right when it comes to these kind of things.
I wish you and Troy would actually talk about this openly. It may seem quite sensitive to you , but once you normalize this just as the people who ask for financial assistance do then it won’t be too awkward. Chalk it up to cultural differences. It reminds me of some advice I heard from a union rep. He said that if everyone at a company knows everyone else’s full salary, then that motivates people to work harder. Contrary to popular belief,knowing everyone ‘s pay does not engender jealousy or backstabbing,but it is just a fact just as promotions and job titles are different so then are pay grades. It is precisely because we tend to place such importance and secrecy to money that we can’t handle it correctly.
If Troy were to say to you :’ she asked me for 20 000 pesos’,then the 2 of you could swap stories and advice on how to handle such things as they occur in the future. This may be uncomfortable as you each may have to reveal your financial situations to each other or feel some pressure to give more than the other, or a discussion may seem unnecessary as you deem it nobody else’s business. But rest assured; anybody who asks you for financial assistance actually shares that information with their friends (as evidenced by referrals you get from people you don’t even know asking for help). If you share information as friends (even if you withhold financial details) that may help you understand the whole story and it won’t be too awkward. It is unfortunately part of your life and even the poorest expats in your town will get requests for help (actually I suspect that the filipinas who asked you for help would’ve asked for help from other filipnos too. And here lies the crux of the matter. The conundrum,if you will. I imagine that you think that there is some sort of order or ranking system. You think that they start by asking from their closest friends and radiating outwards in their social circle. Or maybe they try to match the magnitude of their financial needs to the person they think would be able to match those needs without regards to social cirlces. Either way; the thinking is that by the time they get to you that they must be so desperate, so needy that they overcome their shame to come to you so rejecting them causes them so much more embarrassment. If that were true then the corollary would be true: they would be so grateful to you that they would spend the next few months trying to make it up to you. They wouldn’t need to pay you back but they could at least be nicer or kinder to you. Or at least pretend to be kinder to you. It only takes a second to realize that that can’t be possibly be true. You bought a new laptop for someone a while ago. She had not really stayed in constant contact with you prior to getting the gift . She definitely didn’t become a better friend to you after getting the gift. And she only really got in touch with you when she needed more financial assistance the next time.
Your generous donation (still exacerbated by the fact that you felt compelled to buy her a brand new laptop instead of going with the original idea just to give her your old one once you upgraded) only bought you an opportunity to be asked for a bigger financial favor. In between those two events, not as much as a “how do you do?” or even just an update of how things were going with studies. As far as investments go this had quite poor returns from beginning to end.
You’ve mentioned that you’ve re-purposed the saying that ‘giving is its own reward ‘ to tweak it into ‘I give so that I can get some peace of mind’. Not in so many words but I think that is the gist of it.
Every time you’re up on the trail and you encounter a family living in a rickety shack on the mountain you’re still amazed at how people can live like that and still smile. Well,they’re just like you and I. They have good and bad days. You live in a big house and sometimes you don’t smile. They live on top of the mountain and sometimes they don’t smile. People have the life they have and they just get on with it . It would be boring if we all lived in rickety shacks just as it would be boring if we all lived in mansions. For one ,who would mow my lawn if everyone else also had a huge lawn?
Take it from a regular reader: You do more than enough. You give much more than enough. You employ how many people? How many people have a place to live and can support their families? People in the street,girls in bars and restaurants, the woman who you literally hunt down all across town to hand over a few dollars so that she can buy something. (Actually,I think she’s your best friend in the whole town. You may not talk much , but the fact that you look out for her has an intimate quality to it.
I would say that is the only constant in your life and you’ve made it a major part of your life. That is my favorite of your daily routines precisely because it is not flashy or loud,it is not grandiose or self-serving. And most of all ,it is just a thing you do while on your daily walks. Sometimes you find her ,other times you can’t find her but it’s all okay. If you reach that point in your giving and living when you feel like that with anybody, where you feel that it’s just your routine normal life and it’s ok…. That would be the moment you can say : ‘ I have found the meaning of life. It’s just ok’. ) You literally are a whole economic system for people around you. And get this ,if one day you just stopped all this ,all these people would be fine. They would make arrangements and continue on with life. They were fine before they met you. They’ll be fine after they move on.
Correct me if I’m wrong,but I feel like in your writing ✍ every time you’re asked to provide financial assistance and you end up not agreeing to the request; not only do you wreck yourself with guilt but you go out of your way to somehow make it up by some other form of a grand gesture.
And on the other hand; I don’t know this for sure but I suspect that the person who asked you for help doesn’t spend more than an hour thinking about you but they move on to another person or try to find another way to solve their problems .Of course, seeing as it is mostly their own behavior and thoughts that brought them to the problems they may never find a solution but they do learn to live with it. Until the next time they encounter another problem and they contact you again (along with other possible candidates).
Say ‘no’ enough times and you may go down the list or be skipped entirely. But since you have established a bit of a reputation around the town you’re still gonna field a lot more calls for donations big and small.
Your initial idea of sponsoring just one person and helping them pay it forward is a good one.
An even better way would be finding a way to dissociate your goodness as a person from the money you give as a donation. Kevin has put it succinctly in another post.
Perhaps do kind deeds like helping some kids with their homework or walking their dogs? If your reputation as a good person could be linked to your good deeds with no price tag that would fit into your own lifestyle I think that may be even serve more as an ‘in’ with the local community? Of course; this would expose you more directly to the grinding daily poverty and it doesn’t have the immediacy of taking out your checkbook at every opportunity. Being known by the mountain folk as the guy who helped chop up wood isn’t as glamorous as being the rich dude who bought a laptop for an acquaintance, but it costs less .
If you boil it down it’s like this : most of the help you actually get asked to give involves some lady who’s pregnant and needs money for the baby. You’re bailing out deadbeat dads of your town and in most cases you don’t even know the fathers: the men who are literally running away from their own responsibilities.
If you didn’t have any money , how would you help your fellow man? I don’t know your religion but you definitely have Judeo-Christian values that compel you to help others and the price you pay when you can’t do that is guilt.
This turned out to be another long comment; but I did mention that this is the one subject that intrigues me.
Thanks for the writing as usual.
James, for a person I’ve never met you know me quite well! Your advice and suggestions ring true and I’m really going to work on taking them to heart. You taking the time to give me a figurative slap upside the head really means a lot. It’s strange, but you and Kevin sharing your wisdom with a fuck up like me is in and of itself a generous act of charity. Sincerely, I thank you and cannot really express how much it means to me that you guys take the time to help me figure things out.
Anyway, I think you pretty much nailed it here. I’m getting much better at saying no. The next step is saying no without remorse. I’m getting there as well. Bottom line: I’ll give when it is the right thing to do and something I WANT to do, not when I feel obligated to do so. That’s going to work so much better I think.
Thanks for your thoughts on “mama”. It really is a feel-good situation for us both. I do go looking for her every day and I’m always glad inside when I see her. She gives me a big smile and an “I love you, papa” that comes from the heart. Who knew what amounts to chump change could purchase so much mutual happiness?
Anyway, lots to think about and I appreciate you providing me the food for thought in this comment.
I am not as wise as Kevin or James. I am a practical man. Here in the soon to be Soviet States of America, Pawn Your Title stores are ubiquitous. Why don’t you open a Pawn Your Vagina store? Until the loan is paid off that Tuna Fish Taco belongs to you. It’s a win-win situation as far as I’m concerned! Peace Out!
Damn it, Soju! What a great idea! I’ve kinda been doing that unofficially but once the freshness wears out the enjoyment goes down. Not sure what the fix is for that…