THE NIGHT I WENT TO McDONALDS |
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anonymousWhere I worked earlier this year, the boss occasionally bought us film tickets. We were going to American Beauty one Friday night last February. The afternoon before, I made an appalling mistake. We wasted two hours correcting it. My supervisor was furious. Her name was Sunny, but her disposition wasn't. I was reminded that I was under probation. I was coming down with the flu, but that was no excuse. I felt depressed, ashamed, and spiritually low. I was determined that the next day would be perfect. It was anything else but. Losing another job worried me so much that I trembled on the way to work. My flu was worse. Everything I did went wrong. Sunny got more and more irate all day. "OK' the boss shouted at five, "we're going." Then Sunny flung a batch of customer orders at me and made me correct them. Before I finished, everyone else had left. I ran to the station, without catching up with them. By this time, I was lonely, depressed and sapped of energy, both physically and spiritually. People skills are not my forte. I am full of self-doubt and self-contempt, which in my pride I try to pass off as humility and meekness. I am too insular. Although I bitterly objected to films with "sex scenes" and "adult references", I kept it to myself to avoid confrontation. When I failed to meet my workmates even at the cinemas, I thought nobody would notice or care if I were with them or not. I bought a ticket, after much indecision, then started wandering aimlessly as it grew dark. I considered going home, where I would have been alone (my parents would not be home until very late). Back at the station I met Sunny. She said they were meeting at a pub in Bathurst Street. I traipsed listlessly along Bathurst Street, then gave up. I went into City RSL and forced myself to eat although my appetite diminishes during these depression attacks. Someone walking past me said, "Hard day?" I went to the toilet and realised how he could tell. Ransacked hair overhung my red and sagging eyes. I drank at a tap, because I did not feel worth spending more money on. And as I saw the condom vending machine, I realised that why I was such a prude about sex. My stomach felt full of lead. I could stay in that solitary place no longer. I moped in a daze back towards the cinemas. 1 thought I had dropped the RSL temporary member slip in a garbage bin, but then I tried to find the movie ticket and I realised that I had thrown it away instead. I looked in the bin but could not see it. While groping for it with my arm in the bin up to the shoulder, a woman asked me for a dollar. Her clothes were tattered and her curly hair was dirty and unkempt, but her voice had a strange, calming effect. I withdrew my arm and gave her a dollar. The she asked, "Could you please buy me a meal at McDonalds?" I have a copy of McLibel and have not yet read it, but I know the gist of it. Yet I never thought about it. In the state I was in, I could think very little. As I followed her across the road, she introduced herself as Rachel and shook the hand that had been in the bin. Her hand, although two fingers were amputated at the last knuckle, felt reassuring. It was as if power flowed from her hand into mine. She tried making conversation, and I answered in my slow, halting manner. She asked me where I lived. I tried chatting, but was so devoid of social skills that I could only copy her question. She was obviously homeless. I felt ashamed, but she smiled, as if she liked being homeless. She ordered a meal, then asked if I wanted anything. My appetite was returning to normal. I bought a desert. Then we sat and talked. She told me, as if she were telling an intimate friend, how she gets into hostels and missions when she can, but does not worry if she must sleep on the streets. "Sometimes," she said, "the best things happen on the streets. Look what I found." She rolled up her sleeve, and showed off her prized possession: a cheap bracelet. To her, the copper wire might have been pure gold and the plastic beads precious gems. She wistfully told me, "Some day, I'll get a job. Then I'll be able to afford clothes to go with it." She asked for more money; she needed groceries and she likes giving donations to the hostels when she could. I gave her what some might call an unwise amount. I was late for the movie, but 1 did not care. As she walked out, she said, 'I'd like to have a friend who's not homeless'. We shook hands again, and I could almost have embraced her. I honestly don't remember her walking away. Later on, I thought: she might have simply vanished! Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some
have entertained angels unawares. Although she looked ordinary, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that she was an angel. She did much more than just cheer me up: I felt dead when I met her, but I left her full of spiritual fervour, she turned my despair and misery into joy and hope. I still have problems and depression attacks, but she helped me so much, and I thank God so much for having met her. |
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