Rudder has spent the last hour watching a TV show about making the world's biggest slice of toast. For a man who is so hyperactive, he has a surprisingly high tolerance for TV inanity between his spurts of activity.
Yesterday I went to check out a local yarn store I hadn't been in befor. I meant to get two sets of needles (metal for some boucle yarn that wasn't sliding over bamboo ones, wood for another project I want to take on a plane next month), needle gauge, and some better stitch markers. I got talked into trying a Denise set (only about $15 more than the individual needles would have been) and also ended up buying the markers and gauge, a book (Treasury of Magical Knitting by Cat Bordhi on knitting Moebius-strip scarves) and of course some yarn. Oops. After that splurge I'm attempting to talk myself out of a visit to the shoe store today.
On the more virtuous side, I set a new PR for a half-marathon erg yesterday (21097 meters, 13.1 miles) and took my 3rd IFR flying lesson today.
While I was in the yarn store, a woman bustled in talking on a cell phone and briefly interuppted her conversation to say that she was a teacher directing a group of children making masks, and could the store donate any yarn? Some of the girls wanted it for hair. The store employee referred her to the owner, who was at a worktable in back of the store. The teacher said, "Oh, I'm really in a hurry, could you just ask her for me?"
It gets worse. The employee patiently explained that the teacher would do better asking for herself. She ungraciously told the person on the other end of the cell phone she'd call back, turned off the phone, walked to the back of the store and explained her mission again. The store owner explained that they had several charities to whom they already donated scrap wool. The teacher said, "But I'm a teacher! And I don't have much money for these things. Well, could I at least be put on your list for next year?" The store owner explained that there was a waiting list. At that point a customer working at the back table offered to donate her own scraps for the students. The teacher spent at least five or ten minutes bustling back and forth kooing for her cards, not finding them, and making a production of giving the woman her phone number. Then she said something like, "I used to do all this stuff (gesturing around the store) but I'm way too busy to just sit around a yarn store knitting these days."
To her credit, the other customer did not immediately withdraw her offer to donate yarn. Instead, she told the teacher, "Actually, I work taking care of homeless back home in Puerto Rico," and then listed several other things she does, all both noble and time-consuming. I wanted to go over and cheer for her after the teacher had left (reminding the other woman several more times to call her about the yarn) but I settled for talking to her while I was trying some sample needles to see if I liked them. She was very interesting. I think still another customer did say something about her being a "good person", because I heard her respond, "No, I am not a good person. But I try to be one. That is all you can do, to try."
Pity she couldn't send herself along with her scrap yarn to those kids making the masks, I think they might have learned more of value from her than from their own teacher.
Posted by dichroic at September 19, 2004 03:03 PM