Getting, Giving and Paying the Check

Giving to Get. An idea foreign to many. Instead, they get to get. Nothing outside of their circle matters much. Get what you can. You're entitled to whatever you can grab and call your own.
Get what you can get is not sustainable. Because someone who only practices 'getting' never builds anything. It's short term energy. Think of it as a buzz or a high. Sooner or later you're coming down.

I'm driving to work on Sunday and I see a woman on a payphone. I've driven past this convenience store where the back to back red payphones are mounted many times. I never noticed the phones before Sunday even though they're right next to the sidewalk. And they're painted bright red.

But today I see them and the woman with the auburn hair and orange tank top pressing a receiver to her ear. She is miserable. Mouth drawn tight like it was zipped closed from the inside. She stares intently at the pavement, listening. In the seconds it takes me to pass I don't see her speak. I can read her face well enough. She fought to maintain self control. Internally she wrangled with her demons . I didn't get to see the outcome.

I stopped at a light down the hill. Walking away from me on the left hand side of the street was a man wearing a dark blue tee shirt, cap, and shorts.. Wedged into his armpits were crutches; the silver and beige, hospital variety. He plodded ahead as deliberately as anyone I'd ever seen with a pair of sticks.

I wondered if he might be drunk or on drugs. Quick was I to judge. Especially after he stopped his slow march and raised his right hand up to lips. A shaking hand connected to a hair-covered arm brought the filter to lips. Cig smoke swirled. The pant leg on the left hung empty. It looked stiff like a leg had never been pushed through one end, past and to the other.

There's no expression I can read. All I'll ever get to study is the back of the head. He lowers his hand, cig still clenched between your first and middle finger. And starts shuffling along.

Did he give to get? Or did he give to give? I am only permitted to guess. Car accident? Disease? Military service? Street injury? Could be any of them, I guess. But the deliberate slowness of his movements had me thinking he was sedated within an eyelash of toppling over unconscious.

Give to get? Give to get even? How about give to settle up? How comfortable are you with the thought that there's a scorecard out there for you and what you do? One day you be called to pay the check. Clear your tab. Some might be lucky if it only cost them half a leg. You see them. Maybe you know one of them? Stomping through life like my daughter when she doesn't get her way and marches off to her room. Everyone on the street can feel it. Stomping like Godzilla through Tokyo.

Get to give back? Get to consume? Where do you fit on the scale? Get ready if you're used to getting. Your hour of giving could be nearer than you think.