Here’s a new post for my GRUMPY OLD WOMAN files. Yeah, you thought only old men were grumps a la Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon?
OK, I’ll be the grumpy woman so that I can feel as young as I can.
I saw a girl featured on local television for collecting and distributing gifts to others in need. I am not giving more details than that because I am not here to diss her. She is doing a good thing, and I hope that the TV coverage will inspire others to do the same.
So what makes me grumpy? OK, just being totally up front here even if it makes me look, well, grumpy.
When I was in third grade, I got the idea that children in the hospital needed something to cheer them up. I enlisted the help of another girl in class and, with my teacher’s permission, asked the other kids to bring in toys for the sick kids. They did! When I had collected all the gifts, I had to somehow get them to the hospital. My school was about a mile from my home, and on the way with a little detour was the hospital. So one day I walked to school (age eight haha as if I would have let my kids do that) with my little red wagon.
After school, I loaded the gifts onto the wagon. I had to use a big box, and my teacher gave me something to use for strapping. Then I hauled that stuff all the way to the hospital over very bumpy, crumbling, weed-edged sidewalk tiles. I remember I was sweating. At the hospital they sent me and the wagon to the children’s floor. A (grumpy) nun met me at the entrance, thanked me, and sent me away.
That was that. No news coverage. After all it was only one classroom’s worth of toys. But I was eight and other than that very little bit of help from my teacher and my classmate, I did it all myself.
So why am I grumpy?
Is it because I didn’t get more of a thank you? Or that kids today get more praise for doing the right thing than when I was a kid? That my parents didn’t fully understand what I did and talk to me in a productive way about helping others? Is it because I’m old and remembering my childhood and feeling empathy for that little girl? Or is it because only a few months after that we moved away, and I had to switch schools in March, a very awkward time to enter a new school system, school, and classroom? And that the new teacher was horrible? I am having a hard time evaluating why seeing that news story brought back this event in my life and made me feel out of sorts.
If you want to read more about my little red wagon, here’s one in MacQueen’s Quarterly. It was published there two years ago so it’s possible you’ve seen it. Neither the following story nor the hospital toys story are in Scrap.
How I loved that red wagon. You can see it parked behind the car in the photo.
My Haunted Childhood
