It’s not that I don’t like listening to music, but hearing the same stuff over and over bores me to death. (It's also considerably unsafe to be even remotely distracted while dodging motorcycles on a walk to work.) Especially during a workout routine that’s about two hours long.
Doing the joggy thing on the elliptical seems to last longer with Alan Jackson in my ear. A new song comes on and I immediately think “OK, that’s three minutes gone [Note: this is with the exception of the extended version of ‘Chattahooche’ – who the heck’s idea was that, seriously?], now, how many more songs do I have to listen to before I can get off this thing and stand in front of the AC and gasp for a minute?”
So I find alternatives. Mostly, these have been biblical. I keep up with Pastor Curtis at Thomasville Road Baptist Church and have dabbled in this lecture dude on apparent contradictions in the Bible. Pretty fascinating stuff.
Lately, I happened on a “Through the Bible” series that’s been on the radio since John the Baptist was in fourth grade. The guy – not JtB, obviously – died in 1988, but whoever does this now has a lead-in and then plays this old-time preacher named J. Vernon McGee guy going through, well, the Bible.
The whole “bus ride” takes five years and I decided to jump on with the farthest one back on the archive, which was July 2007. It’s a daily show but I’m fast-tracking. I listen to four during my workout routine and then might listen to one later, depending on what’s on TV. November starts tomorrow.
It’s in no particular order so far as I can discern, but I’ve been listening most recently to Kings. Prior to this, he did David’s life and McGee, this country preacher, keeps using quaint phrases. I mean, it’s REALLY old school – I think he must have originally recorded these during the war in Vietnam based on some of the side comments.
One of his phrases has been “the chickens come home to roost,” which I haven’t heard in forever. He uses it a lot, kind of describing karma. Usually he uses it in negative terms, such as Jacob fooling Easu out of his birthright and then later being duped when he wanted to get married
But sometimes those circular things aren’t bad. Especially if you’re not, you know, sending the husband of your pregnant lover to the front lines to be killed. Sorry, Uriah!
I remember this happening free and clear in Glasgow. I tend to buy those daylong subway passes and, when I am done for the night – I tend to turn in earlier than others – I’ll hand them off to someone about to buy one and say have at it.
When I went to Scotland, I traveled by train to Glasgow from Edinburgh but accidentally bought a round-trip ticket. I went to the little machine and found this guy who gave off a “clearly poor backpacker” vibe and handed it to him.
After getting to Glasgow a couple hours later, I tracked down the buses to the city. Before I could buy a ticket, a guy from the bus place asked if I was headed into town. I said yes, and he handed me a ticket. Someone had given it to him and said to pass it off.
At the time, I laughed, thinking payback didn’t come any quicker than that.
Well, I was wrong.
There’s a lady and her daughter who frequent the overpass I cross over to go to work or the grocery store, or practically anywhere else in my small area of this 650-square kilometer metro area. I’ve no idea of her name or her circumstance. I’d peg the little girl at maybe 6 or 7, though.
They’re clearly homeless, or close to it, but she’s not actively panhandling. I mean, she has a little cup nearby, but she doesn’t look at me and expect me to give her a handout, as this other lady did today.
I’m a bule, which means white person, and of course that means I’m rich. Never mind I am pretty much hand-to-mouth here, but it really, really offends me – and pisses me off, actually – when someone comes to me and ONLY me to ask for money, especially when I am walking in a crowd.
But that’s another rant. This woman, whatever her circumstance, has never asked me for anything and always returns my smile when I pass by. I see her maybe twice a week, and sometimes she and her daughter are just completely asleep when I go by.
Once, when they were both sleeping and I was headed to the store, I came back and left them – still sleeping – with a little bag of goodies. Nothing much – a donut each, some crackers and two drink.
On my way to the store today, they were crashed out again, so I deliberately shopped for them a few snacks. Nothing much, really: two apples, two yogurts (I hope these are good because I got me one, too), two donuts, a tea each and a pack of non-Scooby Snack crackers.
Quite honestly, right now wasn't a good time to do this. I'm almost completely out of cash. Today was payday and the money went to my US bank account OK, but I don't touch that. I live off the housing allowance that I get monthly in rupiah. It's enough to live on modestly and it's a good system.
It's payday for that, too, but since I am off I can't get mine until Monday, when both I and the admin staff are back. In the meantime, I'm down to very little to get me through. But I felt convicted to help these two out, and happy to do it.
Like last time I splurged on these two, it was kind of fun buying for someone else – kind of like a secret Santa. What would a little girl like? Does the mom like guava or mixed fruit? Who doesn’t like chocolate sprinkles?
This time, the duo happened to be awake, which was a little disappointing on a couple of levels. First, I do prefer to remain secret and second, I don’t want to set up any expectations.
But they were grateful, as you can imagine, and even thanked me in English.
Five steps past them – still on the overpass – I saw some paper close to blowing off the overpass. I bent down to pick it up and realized it was money. There were four bills that I caught before they jumped the bridge and into the depths of traffic.
The “chickens-roost” line ran through my head and I laughed to myself as I went down the stairs on the other side of the overpass onto my side of the street.
When I got home, I counted the bills. Rp 34,000, or about $4.
I figured it had to be about what I’d spent on the duo and wondered if God really does have that quick a turnaround on payback, so I dug my grocery receipt out of the bag.
Yogurt: 9,930
Apples: 1,964
Crackers: 4,290
Donuts: 7,980
Tea: 4,380
Total: 28,544
No doubt.
No comments:
Post a Comment