A Tale of Some Socks...

I gave my socks to a homeless woman Saturday.

I don’t say that for any kind of glory.

Quite in fact, it wasn’t my idea…

You’ve heard me say that each of us have our “favorite person” that we deal with regularly on our weekly Homeless Outreach. My wife’s “person” is a lovely Haitian woman named Marie.

This past Saturday, Marie was wearing backless shoes with no socks. And it was COOOOOLD.

Amber, my wife, pulled me aside, and said “Marie is asking for socks…”. I told her that most of our friends were, but we didn’t have any to distribute that week. “No, Ryan…Marie’s not WEARING any socks! Should I give her mine?”

I told Amber to keep her socks on…I’d give her mine. I have a MUCH higher tolerance for cold than Amber does.

I had relatively new, thick tennis shoes on my feet. I was concerned my feet would sweat. In fact, I knew they would. I’m just a sweater. The last time I wore tennis shoes and no socks for any length of time, the shoes wreaked and were irreparable. I was concerned this would happen this time.

Marie HAD NO SOCKS ON HER FEET and I was concerned that my semi-new shoes (which are accompanied by probably 3-4 other pairs of shoes in my closet) would smell bad.

What a jerk.

I spent another hour to hour-and-a-half on our Homeless Outreach, and as Amber and I and our daughter got in the car, my first thought was to head somewhere that I could get a new pair of socks.

Now…let me state…

I’m not in favor of suffering for the sake of suffering. I know people who won’t take Tylenol when they have a headache, for no reason other than that there are some people on the earth who lack access to such medicine. With all due respect to folks of that disposition, I think that’s silly.

We shouldn’t be excessive or wasteful, but if we do have means and resources, then we should use them. Wisely, of course, but we should use them.

So…we happened to be heading in the direction of several department stores and we had the finances to purchase new socks. The plan was to purchase a package. One pair for me…the other seven (or so) in the package would go toward the Homeless Outreach next week.

My point is, I don’t feel that I was wrong for getting new socks.

My point is that I was wrong for how I FELT prior to getting those socks. How urgently I WANTED to get new socks.

As I said, Marie had no socks on her feet. In the past, Marie had socks on. Quite in fact, we’ve given her socks. So, the socks she had were either stolen or given away by her to someone she felt was more deserving (we’ve seen both happen many times in the time we’ve been visiting our brothers and sisters on the streets of St. Louis).

Either way…I have no way of knowing how long Marie had been going with no socks. In backless shoes. In VERY COLD weather.

I had no socks on for an hour and couldn’t wait to run to the nearest store and buy new ones.

You get what I’m saying…