Some hands need holding

I was at the unemployment office today and there was this old Hispanic man asking why he hadn't received his unemployment check since he applied way back in October. The attendant (who spoke Spanish) gave him a phone number to call and inquire. As he started to walk away dejectedly, I asked him if he'd been reporting his hours every two weeks like he was supposed to, and he looked at me mystified. When you call to report your hours, you get a recorded message asking if you want to continue in English, Spanish, or Creole. But here's the thing, it asks you in English. And then you press the appropriate key, and a recorded message guides you through the rest of the process. He couldn't get past the English part. He just needed to know what key to press so he could fill out the rest. So I took him to the phone banks and guided him through it. When I pointed this out to the attendant (who was Hispanic herself and should have been sympathetic) she replied (in Spanish, mind you), "Ahhh, no, no, no, no. He hasn't received a check in 4 months? That's his fault! How can you let something like that go on? I'm not here to hold anybodies hand!" What I should have said was, "Well, maybe because he comes from a foreign land, where things are done very differently, and he truly has no idea how to navigate through our sometimes very complicated system, because he has no frame of reference. Being, you know, from a foreign land. Like our parents. My mom, who couldn't work the intercom system in our condo 'cause it had "too many buttons" (three - talk, listen, and open door). Sometimes, you do need to hold a strangers hand, 'cause the alternative of what it says about our society is too horrible for words. Sometimes, you need to hug a smelly bum on the street who's begging for change, because he's so stripped down of his dignity that he's either invisible, a nuisance, or an after thought. And so you hug the smelly bum as you hand him a dollar, just to say "Hey! I see you. Your carrying around the baggage of lost dreams, missed opportunities, and regret. I get it. I get it." Sometimes you need to do that, because most of the time you don't, and what your looking at is really a fun house mirror reflection of you. Sometimes you need to put a quarter in a stranger's parking meter as you see the meter maid approaching because you, yourself are very nearly broke, and if it was your car, you wouldn't be able to afford the ticket. And that's what it's about: the ticket. Sometimes the cost of admission is too high, just at that point when you really need to hear those sweet sounds that reverberate in your heart and remind you; you have a soul!