From the Editor’s Desk: Right? (Premium)

I swung by Costco this morning on the way to the gym to pick up a prescription. On the way out, I was zigzagging my way through the parking lot to get to my car when I saw a tiny old Asian woman attempting to drag three 75-pound bags of fertilizer (or whatever) out of the back of her minivan, presumably so she could return them. So I zagged back a step and asked her if I could help.

She was delighted that I did, and I quickly stacked the bags on the flatbed cart she had gotten, told her it was no problem, and then made my way back to my car. But I had noticed something troubling as I had approached the woman’s van earlier, and it was still bothering me. There was a couple on either side of that van, in both cases a man and a woman, all younger than me, and they had been there before I arrived. And none of them had thought to help this woman.

I don’t think of my parents as having done a terrific job raising their kids, in fact, I can point to some clear shortcomings there. But I do have an innate understanding of right and wrong, and I have tried to live by example when it comes to my own children. And I’m confused when I don’t see others behaving similarly. Even—maybe especially—when it’s inconvenient. These people had their own items in carts and had just finished shopping, sure. But come on.

This is a tough topic because discussing helping others feels uncomfortably close to bragging about doing so, and acts of charity are best done in private and for the right reasons. But in one of life’s curious coincidences, my wife and I have had several experiences in this vein recently, and it’s getting a little weird. Worse, they’ve triggered a related crisis of confidence in the belief system. Which will make more sense shortly.

From March through November 2023, we lived in an apartment complex in Macungie, a place that is decidedly more blue collar than the areas we’ve lived in that bookend that time. I loved it there, by the train tracks and a short walk from a favorite bar/restaurant that we still visit each week, and still feel like we could end up there again. Among the cast of background characters that made up our life during this brief time was Chris, an elderly gentlemen downstairs who rarely left his apartment because of physical limitations. We only ever saw him, and then got to know him, because he’d sit outside sometimes, and his little balcony or porch was beside the path to the door we used.

Chris is a sweet guy in many ways, but he’s home bound and he needs help. He doesn’t have family close by, and he’s apparently relied on a series of neighbors to help him with shopping, especially, and other errands. Over the course of our time there, we quickly became some of his key helpers. We often did his food shopping, bought his cheap wine, and brought home meals from that restaurant we used to walk to pretty regularly. The first time we walked up to the register at the liquor store, the guy behind the counter saw the cheap box of wine I was almost embarrassed to carry, and immediately asked, “Oh, is this for Chris?”

This would all be very nice were it not for the other, uglier side of this story. My wife and I grew to really resent Chris over time, felt that he was abusing the situation and could, perhaps, be a bit more self-sufficient. Worse, we hated ourselves for this. Obviously, we’re going to help this guy, it’s the right thing to do. But as obviously, it bothered the both of us. One of the worst days I ever had during the time, I had to go to the supermarket for Chris by myself for whatever reason, and he had prepared a particularly long list of very specific food items, none of which I could find, and I left that place in a tizzy probably two hours later, totally drained.

The problem is that being nice, doing the right thing, sometimes isn’t enough, and certainly isn’t its own reward. Chris would complain if the bananas were too ripe, in oddly passive-aggressive ways, for example, or if the terrible American cheese he gets wasn’t sliced correctly. Once we literally received a photo of an overly ripe banana via text message with no accompanying explanation, like a threat. And he was brutal to speak with, dragging out what should have been quick exchanges into mind-numbing conversations in which he would apologize profusely and repeatedly and go over the same items again and again. We dreaded these moments but could never do anything to make them easier. The guy’s lonely. It’s not our fault, but it became our problem.

When we agreed to move into my sisters’ mother’s condo in late 2023, Stephanie was determined to make a break with Chris. Helping matters, we were in Mexico for three weeks right before we moved, and so there was a period of time during which we just weren’t available. But fate had other ideas: The other two people we knew were helping him in the apartment complex disappeared—one literally broke her hip and moved elsewhere, the other is a mystery—and Chris began a steady campaign of escalating what started as one-off favors into a more regular series of shopping and other errands.

People have occasionally compared me to Eeyore, the depressed and pessimistic donkey from the Winnie the Pooh stories, and while I vaguely get that, I am a wide-eyed optimist compared to Chris. He … just wears on you. And as our experiences with him grew again despite our having moved away, my wife and I have found ourselves in this familiar, unhappy place. A place in which we fight with each other because we’re mad about the same thing, but have no one else to take it out on. I guess we’re hoping the other will just solve this problem, cut off Chris, and save us from his droning, needy terribleness.

We were sitting at that Macungie bar/restaurant with some people we know from there, and Stephanie at one point excused herself to run next door to the liquor store, where she purchased some wine for Chris and then put it in the car before returning. This couple asked what that was about, and so we explained the Chris story briefly, and were then taken aback when they profusely complimented us for being so nice. I had to put a stop to it. You don’t understand, I explained. Doing this is horrible. We fight about it.

This triggered a longer, deeper conversation that started us down a path towards friendship, that moment I wrote about earlier when the “hello people” in your life sometimes transition into something more meaningful. We learned more about them and their struggles, the things they deal with and how they, too, just try to do the right thing, even when it’s not convenient.

So that’s nice. But the following Friday, Stephanie asked me in the morning what I thought about trying to get to the happy hour at Youell’s, a surprisingly good local seafood restaurant that has an inexpensive selection of food during that happy hour on Fridays. The problem is, it starts at 4 pm, which is far too early, still in what I consider to be the workday. And it’s always packed: If you show up at a normal time, like 5 or 6 pm, you can’t get anywhere near it.

She’d been itching to try this for weeks, so I agreed: I would try to finish up work early that day so we could leave our place at 3:30 and make it to Youell’s by 4, and we’d get a seat at the bar and finally get to experience this unicorn of a happy hour. And I did it, somehow, was dressed and ready to go, and we left our little development on time and on schedule. We were going to make it, one of life’s little victories.

But as we approached a busy intersection nearby at the bottom of the hill, things looked a little too chaotic, even given the rush hour traffic. These events happen as if in slow motion at the time, but as we pulled up to our red light and looked around us, it was clear that we had arrived just after a major accident had occurred. To our left was a white car off the side of the road, mostly destroyed. In front of us was an explosion of glass, plastic, and metal on the road. And to our right was … a young woman, looking lost, and holding a tiny baby. Her car, also visibly destroyed along its passenger side, was behind her, to our right, partially in the road.

Taking this all in, my wife asked, “Should we help?”

“Yes.” Obviously.

She rolled down the window and asked the woman with the baby if she needed us to call the police. She did: Her phone was still in the car, lost.

“Get out and call the police,” I said, “and be careful.” It was rush hour, and there’s a reason I complain about the drivers in this state. She did, and I half-circled back around and pulled up behind—well, in front of—the other vehicle, the white car. That car’s owner was also a woman, but alone, and she was fine. Her car was clearly totaled.

After speaking with her, I crossed over to check on what seemed like the bigger problem. Stephanie was finishing up with the 911 call—there’s always some jurisdictional confusion in this part of Pennsylvania because some townships don’t have local police, but the state police were on the way—and I asked the woman with the baby if they were both OK. They were, but she was clearly rattled. And her car was at the end of a debris field partially blocking traffic, making what was already a busy intersection into even more of a slog.

“Do you want me to try and move your car?” I asked, not even sure if that made sense. She seemed to think that was a good idea, and so I walked over to the far side, the traffic side, and opened the door. Everything in the vehicle had been thrown into the front, as you might expect. But I saw her phone on the floor, grabbed it, adjusted the seat, and moved the vehicle fully into the breakdown lane. Definitely better. Plus, she was happy to get her phone back, so she called her husband.

The state police took what felt like a long time to arrive. During that time, the woman with the baby told us we didn’t need to stick around, but we told her we didn’t feel right leaving her, and then she gushed her thanks, happy that we would stay. Stephanie even held the baby, so the woman could carefully retrieve some items from the car—the passenger side doors could no longer be opened—and this kid was in such a good mood for some reason, it almost made the whole thing OK. The other woman’s family arrived, and then the state police. And then we finally said our goodbyes after checking in with the cop, as we hadn’t seen the accident and couldn’t be useful any further.

As I half-circled back to our original trajectory again, I checked the time: We had only been there 20 minutes or so, though it had felt like an eternity. And there was no way we were going to make it in time for happy hour, we’d be 15 minutes late or so. We decided to try anyway. As we pulled up to the restaurant, we could see all the cars parked nearby and already knew what we’d find. I saw a car pull up and take the last available space, so I dropped Stephanie off by the door and asked her to please beat those people inside. Maybe we’d get lucky.

Not so much. After I parked a block away and walked inside, I saw what I expected to see, a bar area stuffed full of people, like a sardine can. And in the middle of it all, my wife, standing in front of a single empty chair. We could have that one chair, she said, but I’d have to stand. And that was just silly: It was too busy to begin with, and everyone there had just arrived. So we gave up the chair, which was immediately taken by the couple she had beaten inside, and we walked out, dejected. It wasn’t even 4:30 in the afternoon, too early to eat or drink and too late to go home. Had we left the house a few minutes earlier or later, we would have almost certainly pulled it off. And now we were stuck.

We drove around and tried a few other places, but eventually, we landed at our usual Friday night spot, just earlier than usual. And in sharp contrast to what I feel is an underserved reputation as an Eeyore, I told Stephanie that I’d do it again and that this was just a test, a test we had passed. We had helped someone else, even when it was inconvenient. I’d like to believe I’d do the same even if it endangered my safety, though I’m not sure if I’ve been tested to that degree yet. But it feels right. It’s the right thing to do.

This naturally reminded me of when our daughter Kelly had gotten in a car accident a few months back, in South Carolina, and had followed the other car when it sped from the accident. I could hear my wife on the phone telling Kelly that that was crazy and wrong, but I would have none of that. “Give me the phone,” I said. And when I heard Kelly on the other end, I said, “Don’t listen to her. You did the right thing.” You have to stand up for yourself. And in this case, she had seen that the car that had caused the accident was driven by a woman with a small child, and that there was no real danger to her. So good for her.

This past weekend, Chris called again, looking for wine. And then, a day later, looking for food. And we did what we needed to do, sullenly and without any enthusiasm. We discussed how we might break this cycle of terribleness without just abandoning the guy, and wondered for the umpteenth time why his family doesn’t step in and help. But we just did it. And then silently sat at the bar at that restaurant in Macungie, questioning everything.

I don’t know. It’s always clear what the right thing is. It’s just not always easy doing it. And maybe I’m starting to understand why some people just can’t help others. I will fight ever becoming that person, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was a struggle.