This happened to me a few years back.
I was standing on a deserted wind-swept train platform after work one Friday. It was the start of a long weekend for us employees of the State and most of my peers had snuck out early. But my car was in the shop and I was forced to take public transportation, which means I was forced to stay the entire day since the train to my town didn’t come until after 5pm. Needless to say, I was feeling sorry for myself.
Then another woman joined me on the platform. She stood in front of the posted schedule, lips pursed, and finally spoke to me. “Does this train go to Quincy?”
I gave her a quick once-over. Clean jeans. Plain shirt. Neat hair and almost no make-up. She looked about 40. Maybe 10 years my junior. And obviously not from around here or she would know the routes. “No. To get there you have to go all the way into Boston.”
Her face fell. This was obviously an inconvenience to her. But I was in the process of being majorly inconvenienced myself and didn’t feel sympathetic. It had just occurred to me that, due to the bad timing of this train, I would arrive at my station when nobody would be at home, thus I now had a ¾ mile walk to add to my insults. But when she spoke, she did not offer complaint. She had one more question: how much was the fare?
If you are standing on a deserted platform miles from the city you need to be in, and feel the need to ask about the fare, you are probably not having a good day either. But I thought I could make her day better in some small way. The fare to Boston is minor. About $4 or so, I thought.
Her face fell again.
I have learned that if you have a very personal question to ask of someone, and have the time to wait, eventually they will tell you the answer without you needing to ask. I have also learned, that, in the absence of time, sometimes the only way to find out a thing is to ask the question straight out. So I asked, “How did you come to be so far from home with no money for train fare?”
And she told me. She was released from women’s prison that very afternoon. Yes, it is wonderful as when she went for the hearing she didn’t expect to be granted parole. She’d been 6 years behind bars, and this was her first taste of freedom. But the release was so unexpected that she did not have time to warn her family, thus she was trying to make her way north.
The realist in me arose. “But,” I objected, “I thought they were supposed to give you some funds when they released you.” And the answer made me ashamed of my fellow state employees. It made me ashamed of myself, too, for it I’d had the chance I’d have left early this spring afternoon in order to go celebrate the coming Easter Holiday. While she was in session, the office that doles out funds and transportation tickets closed early. “I guess they all went home for the long weekend,” she said matter-of-factly.
Her crime was drugs, and prostitution in order to support those drugs. Thus she was arrested in our city and incarcerated miles away in the western part of the state. I did some quick mental math: $4 to get to Boston; another $3 maybe to get to Quincy. I checked my wallet. It was shy, because without a car to get to a bank I was short on cash. But I had a $10 bill and about $3 in change. I only needed $3 for my fare. What, I wondered, would $10 buy on the street in drugs? Then, with my train approaching, I decided. “Here.”
She looked surprised. “Most people wouldn’t do this,” she acknowledged. I studied her face. She could be younger than 40. Those lines might have come from hard living. “You paid your price,” I said. “Now you have a chance to start anew. This is the money we owe you.”
She looked even more surprised. “You owe me?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking out loud and conviction growing. “Society locked you up for breaking the rules. You did your time, and the rules say you should be given a way to get home. We owe you this, because your punishment is over.”
Then my train pulled up and I got on, heading south for a warm home and sweet family. I never looked back to see her face. I’ve never really needed to. It’s the reason why I say, try a random act of kindness. It will improve the lives of the giver as well as the receiver.
Cindy