She had me at "Can I have a hug?"

I wrote this post three weeks ago and couldn’t decide if it was too personal or too whiny to publish on my blog. The scale tipped when our pastor preached about the boundaries. When I was young, compartmentalizing the different facets of my life and setting boundaries wasn’t all that hard. I kept work stuff at work, family stuff at home. As an educator, tough love was the rule of the day. Thirty years later, things have blurred, and I think this post is about how aging tends to muddle up boundaries.  Here it is:

I’m a grandfather, a recent change of status which I admit I’ve been unabashedly milking in my blog posts. And I’m a southern man who’s mastered the art of the a-sexual side-hug. It’s a handy tool for one’s social toolkit, at least in my part of the country, where hugs often substitute for handshakes.

I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago about my volunteer work with the local Salvation Army chapter-“service unit” it’s called officially. In a nutshell, we give away locally donated money to local folks who are in need of financial assistance to pay their bills. It’s more complicated than that, but not too much.

For the past several years, I’ve been one of the volunteers who staff our Salvation Army “office hours” each month. It’s a time when anyone can walk in off the street and ask for $100 to help with their basic everyday needs. Needs like paying their electric bill or rent, buying food, gas, or baby supplies.  We have some practical safeguards to prevent abuse and over-dependency on our charity. Nonetheless, I often hold my proverbial nose as I write an assistance check for some of our “regulars” who in their own way game our system.

But don’t we all game our personal finances as much as our integrity and the hidden rules we live by allow for? So I try to cut people some slack.

Last week, a young woman wearing a McDonald’s employee’s uniform walked in. It was 11:15 and her first words were that her boss told her to be back by noon. She was new to the job. Like many first-timers she apologized for seeking financial assistance, and like some folks, before she had been seated at the table for more than a few seconds, she gushed - not crying, but simply telling me in a rush of words of the particulars of her hard life as it stood that day.

I get impatient with whiners. I have to bite my tongue when young women with three or four young children from three or four fathers tell me they’re not getting any child support, but need help. You can imagine how that tune goes.

The difference with this gal was she had only one child, a two-year old daughter, and after about every third sentence, she paused from speaking of the hard road she traveled, and said, “But I’m strong. I’m a good person. A good mother. I’m going to make it.” Then she’d tell me about another brick in the wall that was keeping her from financial independence. Her manner and emotions were bouncing up and down like a paddle ball on a rubber band.

I was a high school principal for fourteen years, and I’ve heard my share of sob stories. I think I can usually read a con, recognize a gamer. I can be a hard-nosed SOB, but I also confess to having a soft heart, sometimes a push-over heart. Also, Nita and I raised two sons, no little girls. I believe those men who say, “You can’t scare me, I raised two daughters.” I know I can be had by doe eyes and a trembling voice. So I keep my own wall up between us during such interviews.

This young woman interrupted her own story at about the point of telling me her husband was in prison in Mississippi for murder, but he says he didn’t do it, and her mother is …not so helpful, and her grandmother in Iowa has sent her all the money she can afford, and her roommate is doing something or the other that’s bad.

Then, without warning, sitting primly across the table from me and my half-written Salvation Army assistance check, in the middle of her litany of woes, she just blurted out, “Can I have a hug? I could really use a hug.” Well, hell. She had me.

I swallowed. I looked at her. I decided in a flash this was her way of asking an old gray-haired bespectacled man to pray for her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask in those words. I also figured she probably did indeed need a real bear hug from someone who would just affirm by a big squeeze that she was OK.

So, l said, “Sure,” got up and gave her my best socially-correct sideways hug, no bear hug. And I gave her a Salvation Army check to help pay her overdue electric bill, and a grocery store gift card to buy a birthday present and diapers for her daughter. Maybe she used the card for beer and cigarettes. There’s no way for me to know, but my intuition says she didn’t.

There’s no Civil War point to this post. No writer’s “Ah Hah” instant of revelation. This one is just me including you in my wondering if she had me in a good way at “Can I have a hug?” or if she conned me and will be back again for another hit of charity the next time we open the door, telling me of another lost job or lost apartment or messed-up roommate.

The young lady is certainly one of the countless bouncing pebbles in the river of single moms who are willing minimum-wage slaves in America’s cold-blooded fast-food industry. One side of me suspects she’ll cope by moving along to a new tattooed boyfriend, new empty promises of affection, other shabby house trailers piled high with litter.

But she told me, “I need a hug.” I really wish she hadn’t done that. Maybe I would not still be worrying about her and her little daughter a week later. Maybe she is strong, resilient and a good mother like she self-proclaimed. Maybe she will keep on keeping on making things a little better month by month for herself and her daughter. Maybe she will pull herself up. I sure hope so.