When one of my daughters studied abroad and found her roommate stealing her food because the girl had no money to buy groceries, my daughter was upset. When she finally told me about it a few years later, I had to say to her, “That was me. I was the girl sneaking food because I didn’t have any money.”
I saved my summer job money and took myself to South America to student teach in Caracas and also to Spain for my last semester of college. I didn’t have drinking money. I didn’t have an endless supply of allowance to buy pizza whenever I felt like it. In college, I was so budgeted that I had to choose between a tube of toothpaste or a Slow Gin Fizz on Friday night.
Which is hilarious, because gin tastes like you’re sucking on a pine tree.
But I digress.
At the time, beer was only 35 cents, but it was beer – gross. A slow gin fizz was $1.00, so I went on lots of dates where lots of guys bought me my favorite drink. Sorority sisters loaned me clothes to wear on dates (not the one who told me to go get some new clothes since she was tired of seeing a certain top I wore over and over).
People have paid it forward to me a zillion times, like the repair guy who brought me a working washer and dryer when I bought my first house in my 8th year of teaching. He had heard from a friend , a fellow, older teacher, that I needed them.
Or my roommate’s dad, who dropped off his daughter to teach in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, and when he saw that I had no bed to sleep in, he took both of us to the furniture store, bought us the two beds, and told me I could pay him back little by little. Which I did, since I was a poor teacher.
Or the vet in Omaha who only charged me $25 to have my new dog spayed. It was 1983, but still, that was hella cheap, even for way back then.
Once, as I worked as a cocktail waitress, a guy left me a $100 tip. There were no strings attached, and when I objected, he said I was embarrassing him and to just take the money. I threw myself a house-warming party.
I gave a teacher friend my grandmother’s dining room table, since my future husband wouldn’t pay to have it moved to California. She and her sister insisted on driving me to the airport when I went out to visit him. Paying it forward, or paying me back? Either way, it was appreciated.
Looking back at all the people who did things to help me get ahead, I can see that paying it forward is the way to go, when you are in a position to help someone younger and poorer.
I don’t know if my daughter’s roommate was younger, but she was definitely poorer. My daughter had pocket money (frome her dad) for SCUBA diving lessons, and a trip to the Dead Sea and Petra. Her roommate didn’t have money for meals.
After she heard my sad story of me with no money in college and as a teacher, my daughter felt better about the girl eating her groceries, after I explained that she had paid it forward, whether she liked it or not. Besides, it wasn’t really her money ayway, that bought those groceries, It was mine.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 