Goodwill, a hit-and-run, and the nature of cooperation.

 

"You want to get in the line for me please?"

One of my favorite ladies who works at my favorite Goodwill store had made eye contact with me. I was in what I thought was "the line" but clearly it was not. I snapped to attention, looked where she was pointing, muttered "sorry" and hightailed it to the end of the line. Very far from where I was standing, which was very close to her register.

"I'll get you!" she hollered in her normal, good-natured way.

Surprisingly, the long line fed into three registers so it moved pretty quickly. And sure enough, I did end up at her register. "I told you I'd get you!" she said with a smile. I laughed and said something to the effect of never knowing how the lines are going to work on any given day, and I was telling the truth. That Saturday they formed one long line along the ends of some clothing racks in front of the registers. Other weeks the line forms the opposite way, down an aisle between racks. In my usual awkward way I let her know I wouldn't want to break rules or jump lines, I'm happy to wait my turn. She's seen it all in that store I am quite sure, so she just reiterated that they have to keep order.

Lately I have been thinking about the nature of cooperation. 

So when I go to my Goodwill store - I call it "mine" because I am there quite a lot, and while I'm not on a first name basis with any of the workers, they all know me - there is an implied agreement that we'll cooperate with the rule of the land. That includes the checkout line, but also shopping behavior, dressing room protocol, and even the cart return.

Cooperation happens everywhere, or at least that's the general idea we've agreed to. We cooperate in sharing the road. We cooperate with traffic laws (mostly). Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast (name the reference and win a prize). We cooperate in restaurants, grocery stores, and gas stations. We even cooperate at Mass.

People cooperate until they don't. And that's what anxiety-me is always braced for.

In that same store one Saturday morning there was an unsettling moment when a man decided to not cooperate. He stood at the register and started raising his voice to an employee. My radar picked it up as upset sounds instantly, and I scanned for the exits and tried to make myself invisible. I wanted to be as present as I could, you know, "in case," so I stayed far enough away to not draw attention, but close enough to hear some key words. 

He was talking about God, heaven, hell, and who was going where and why. And he seemed adamant that he knew who belongs in hell and was, as I recall, volunteering to send them there. He was saying things about the end of times, and that he would be the only one left because he was going to kill all the rest. 

What shocked me more than this guy off his meds was how utterly calm the woman was who was behind the counter. She didn't freak and run. She just stood there listening. I kept looking around the store for someone strong enough to jump to her defense if needed, because this guy was big, but everyone else was ignoring the whole thing. 

This went on for maybe 5 minutes, and then, it was just over. I might remember that he was making a return, and possibly when she handed him his receipt the transaction was over and he left. I waited a long, long time before leaving the building just hoping the guy had gone on to his next judgement seat. 

On another Saturday morning quite a while ago (pre-Covid I believe), I was minding my own business driving toward home from shopping. I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed a white pickup coming up on me fast. There wasn't a ton of traffic, and I was in the right lane, so I just kept going my speed, while the guy flew around me on the left and cut hard back into the right lane right in front of me. I blurted out loud: wow, that guy is flying, that doesn't seem safe. And just as I was saying that I realized this guy wasn't just "driving fast" he was "getting away." 

He careened into a turn lane on the right, and dove down into a strip mall parking lot, where he collided with a little teal car that was trying to exit the lot. His truck pushed the car sideways, then he managed to cut to the right, and, still at a high rate of speed, he tore across the lot and around the back of the building and disappeared. 

I watched all this happen and knew I had to stop. By the time I pulled down into the same lot I could hear the sounds of an adolescent child screaming at the top of his lungs. I wasn't sure if the white truck was lurking somewhere or not so I pulled into a spot a little ways away from the hit car, fumbled for my phone, and called 911. It was the first and only time in my life I have ever called emergency services.

By this time I was shaking. And the screaming continued. What had I just witnessed? What was that guy running from? Where were the cops? Was anyone hurt? The person on the phone told me to calm down and I tried. She told me help was on the way. I told her what I had seen, which way the truck went, and by that time police had shown up and were attending to the people in the car. It seemed like they were more scared than hurt. The 911 woman told me that they didn't need to talk to me there at the scene, but they'd call if they had questions.

I wasn't involved, I just saw it all. Eventually I calmed down enough to get myself on the road for home, all the while scanning for suspicious white trucks.

Just writing these stories brings back those shaky feelings of realizing that we can't and won't always know what someone is doing, or will do, or why. Remembering such dramatic scenes of people "not cooperating" really shook me. What disturbs me most was that they just didn't care about the people they were affecting. 

Neither of these was a huge catastrophic event compared to things so many people have been through.

Still, it's a pretty fragile thing, populating the planet together. In today's Gospel Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us. He reminds us that the Father "makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust." And, as if he really wanted to drive home some message or something, Jesus had to go and add, "For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?"

I spend time praying for strangers (I mean I even pray for Atheist doctors), and for those I think "need" or "deserve" something. But could I "love the uncooperative and pray for those who don't care about me?" I never thought about it until now. But I think we should. At least, I should. 

Here's a bit from Fr. Jacques Phillippe's book Interior Freedom that is worth (me) remembering:

Yes, we know suffering and sorrow, but everything that happens serves to make us grow in love and in the fact of being God's children. What happens and how others behave can no longer touch us negatively; they can only promote our true good, which is to love.

Which I guess puts an exclamation point on what Jesus was getting at. Just love.