Say It Ain't So Already

Putting Things in Perspective: Thrilled About a Tub of Sour Cream

September 16, 2011 at 4:12 PM Leave a comment

I just got home from my volunteer time at the food bank.  Wow.  What a day.  We had a steady, and I mean steady, stream of clients all morning, yet we were short on volunteers so it was very hectic.  (I’m so glad to finally be sitting down!)

We were very low on the staples, i.e., canned goods, meat (no meat at all), pasta and cereal but thank goodness we had lots of milk, cream cheese, mozzarella, yogurt, sour cream, fresh fruit (strawberries, raspberries, plums, bananas, melons) and veggies (tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, baby spinach and “Spring greens”).

I had an experience that really put being poor into perspective.  I was walking a very sweet and attractive middle-aged lady through the food bank.  She didn’t take all she was entitled to — she seemed to be most interested in the fresh fruits and veggies which are at the end of the aisle.  But when we got to the dairy area, she saw we had tubs of sour scream and she literally shrieked with excitement.  She reached into the cooler and held a tub in her hands as if she was caressing it.  She turned to me and asked, “Can I have one of these,” and of course she could so I said “Yes.”

She thanked me over and over again and said she “couldn’t remember” how long it had been since she’d had sour cream and then she went on about how much she loved it.

That’s the difference between doing OK in this economy and not.  The people who are doing OK can buy a tub of sour cream if they want and not think twice about it.  The people who are suffering literally can’t, or they do without something else if they do.

God am I ever glad we had sour cream today!

Experiences like this really hit me in the gut.

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