KFC Non-kindness

I stood at the edge of a big river. The sun was out and the river flowed green with flourishes of white. A dozen boats with salmon fishermen aboard plied the water.

This was a city park, a well-kept one, with visitor amenities and rows of rock work that suggested artistic intent.

Something moved in the rock work. I turned around and saw a young man resting inside a sleeping bag on the grass. Our eyes met and we nodded hello. He had a dirty and sallow face, a face of homeless hunger. It was two in the afternoon.

A shiny rig rolled up in the parking lot. A family of five, all impeccably dressed and coiffed, jumped out: husband, wife, three kids. One kid carried a KFC bucket, almost the size of his torso. It looked big enough to feed ten people and a murder of crows.

The family headed toward to the rock work for their late lunch on the river. I moved away, toward a path, and headed for home. I walked a few seconds and then turned around. The Dad told the sleeping bag man to beat it. The man arose, said nothing, gathered up the bag, and skulked away. The family took over the area and dug into the KFC. I saw a kid eating a drumstick while standing on the rock work.

Think of the lesson the Dad taught his children. Think of the lesson in kindness he could have taught them had they shared their lunch with the man. That lesson would have never left the children and reverberated through the years to inspire innumerable and unimaginable acts of kindness. One of these future acts might well have changed the course of a neighborhood, community, country, or a single person or dog’s life.

One wonders where the actual lesson the Dad taught at the river might lead. Actually, it’s where we are now as a nation.