Sunday, November 11, 2007

Flipping Turtles

*This is a "sticky" post, meaning it will always show up first. For new posts, keep scrolling down.*

So, I was thinking about the article we read, "Political Paralysis," and the great discussion we had in class on it. I especially liked the part about how she stopped to flip turtles over when she walked near the railroad. She says something like, "It's a small thing to me, but it means the world to the turtle."

In the spirit of that idea, I'm creating this sticky post so we can publish the "small," anonymous things we've done. We can all be "anonymous saints." You can add to this anytime you like in the comments section. Here's what I did recently:

I was going to pick up my son from the Boys & Girls Club, and a college student was sitting on the bench outside. She stopped me and asked me if I would fill out a bunch of paperwork about my son and his habits. She was getting her Master's in Psychology, and she was doing a study on kids with ADHD. My son doesn't have ADHD, but she needed kids without it as well. She said the paperwork would take about 20-30 minutes at home and that I'd have to return it to her. My first instinct was to say "no", because I'm so busy. But I also thought about how much it would mean to her--it's her degree, after all! And it's hard to ask people to help you. So I said yes. And yes, it was a pain in the ass to fill out those papers. But it meant a lot to her. And who knows? Maybe what she's doing will help kids with ADHD and their parents. A little bit of my time could mean a whole lot.

That's the turtle I flipped today. What turtles did you flip?

-- JG

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I live in Braxton Tower, and for those of you familiar with Towers, you know that each floor has their own designated (for the lack of a better word) "cleaning lady". I had a soft spot for her the day I met her. Her name is Gwen and shes soft-spoken and shy. A few weeks into school I bought Gwen candy and a card. I put the giftbag on her cleaning cart and walked back to my room. She wrote a note to the annonymous giftgiver and posted it on her cleaning closet door. She said that in the 22 years of working the same job at WVU, she had never experienced such kindness. She bragged that she was proud to call our floor, HER floor. How depressing to think that 10 minutes of my day made that big of an impact on her, purely because no one before me was willing to give 10 minutes of themselves.