Year of Giving

Sunday was a long day.  I had my final two theatre performances of The Foreigner, one at 2pm and the other at 7pm.  I thought both went well.  After the second show we had to tear down the entire set and put everything back in storage.  This took us about 2.5 hours, so we left at around midnight.

It’s a good thing that I found someone to give my $10 to earlier in the day.  In fact, I gave it to someone I found in the lobby of the theatre who had seen the 7pm show.  Andrea said that she enjoyed the show and that I was her favorite actor in the play…ok, so she didn’t say that…but I am sure that is what she was thinking.

She is a 35-year-old social worker in the home healthcare field.  Andrea deals directly with the public when they are unhappy with her firm’s services.  She is calm and relaxed talking with me.  I bet that this attribute is a huge asset in her work when irate customers call her to complain.

I usually ask the people I meet a couple of standard questions.  One I like to ask is that they tell me something interesting or unique about themselves.  This is a hard question for many people to answer.  Andrea struggled as well.  She told me that she was the mother of two children…and then she drew a blank on what else to tell me.  She used a lifeline and asked her husband who was with her at the show to share something.  That sparked some thinking and I soon knew that she had met some interesting people such as B.B. King and Garrison Keillor.

I asked her what she was going to do with the $10.  She told me that she didn’t think she was the right person to receive it because she would probably just get a burrito bowl at Chipotle or something.  She said that she really wanted to do something more meaningful with it and asked to be able to think about it a while and then get back to me.  We exchanged emails and I hope to hear from her soon.

I think it is great that people want to think about it.  It shows that my unconditional gift to them has caused them to think about how they should use it, or possibly even how they look at giving in general.  If you want to read a good summary of one recipient’s thought process about what to do with the $10, check out an email I received from Sara of Day 44. 

Before I left to go help strike the set, I asked her if there was something that the readers of the Year of Giving could help her with and she said that she was looking for a new job.  I will post this on the Lend A Hand page as well, but she said that she would ideally find a job as a Director of Consumer Relations of an Assisted Living operation.  If you know any contacts in this field in the Greater DC area, please post them here or contact me and I can contact Andrea.

Look for tomorrow’s post about Ivory, an interesting writer and salesman for Street Sense!  I got some video of him as well that I will try to post here or on the Facebook Page.