He started with the usual “spare any change, miss?” and I countered “no, sorry,” without thinking As he began telling me that $3.49 bought him one box of cornflakes, (and, hey, that lasted him the whole week!) I realized that I was still shaking my head. I stopped. He was obviously poor; I had the extra $2.00 in change saved from free Sunday parking meters. I gave it to him. He god bless-ed me and splashed away.

I hate that my first instinct was rejection.

American society has somehow adopted the idea that pure charity is a waste. Give a dollar to that person with the cardboard sign on corner, we say, and they’ll use it for alcohol or drugs or cigarettes. Upper-middle class mothers lock the doors of their Suburbans at the off-ramp. Men in suits avert their eyes when lunching through downtown streets. And the woman in the wheelchair, the pregnant girl on the sidewalk, the mentally ill man holding “vary sik plees help” on crumpled cardboard are ignored. The cost of denying aid to the many who deserve it is greater than a few wasted quarters to those who do not.

People are basically proud. We all want to retain an image of strength, to cling to dignity through difficulty or destitution. A woman of forty does not plead from the median of Montlake Boulevard unless she has to: she is not there to scam, but to survive. She can feel the stares from the review mirrors as each set of eyes passes their judgment. She can hear the rattle of coins in glove compartments which drivers will refuse to quiet, coins that to them are a nuisance and to her are a meal.

No person endures this humiliation for a few free beers. With twisted logic, however, the American public thinks that it is helping these people by refusing them the few dollars they need.

Or maybe we are just scared. It’s the plastic grocery bag over the stringy hair which drives us away, and the garbled words which we don’t try quite hard enough to understand. A “normal” person speaks. We step forward, we say “excuse me?” and we listen to the message passing between their Chap-Stick-ed lips and just-brushed teeth. An “other” person does the same. We glance their bloodshot eyes or dirt underneath their fingernails. We recoil, and we hurry past with pretend urgency.

It takes effort to relate to someone who lives in either a mental or physical state so different from our own, and we are lazy. The cultural standards for proper interaction have evolved to exclude beggars and bums. Why make an unnecessary effort to go beyond what’s expected?

I know I’m guilty for taking the easy way out.

We do so much without thinking. The actions and customs of those around us become first our habits and then our instincts; conscious choices are shoved aside. Any single American does not decide, by their own actions, to abandon the disadvantaged or dismiss the homeless with rude words of rejection.

We’re not deliberately greedy. We’re not intentionally pitiless. Yet we follow our first, involuntary shake of the head and our feet have learned from years of practice to quickly walk away.

I didn’t change the life of the man under the overhang. Maybe he took my money, bought a box of cereal, and ate breakfast with a little more ease than the week before. Maybe he walked down the street to the Kwik-Mart, got a 12-pack of Bud Light, and puked himself to sleep on the curb that night. It doesn’t matter. At least he, for a moment, felt like someone cared.

The babysitting saga starts when a woman calls, frazzled, and asks if I can come tonight to watch the kids. I’m indecisive. I stall; I debate my deep hatred of babysitting against the deep hole in my bank account where $80 is now dug out monthly for gas. I say yes. And then, there, with the Jeep and the crayons and the grape juice, I debate again whether it is my place to teach whatever kids have been obnoxious this week to say please, and thank you, and stop resorting to backgammon violence as a method of retaliation.

A high school babysitter is not a parent. Should she assume that whatever terrorism those kids are inflicting has been allowed for a reason and let it go? Or should she use every occasion of awfulness as an intervention?

“Sophiiiiee…clean that up.” I’m back with Danny. He has completely ignored the purple stain attacking me, and settled himself in leather armchair in front of the TV with his feet up. He laughs at something on Drake and Josh, looks out the window, and then, without even glancing towards me, says, “Oh, and the chickens got out of the coop. You have to go catch them.” He sips the remaining juice through a bendy straw.

I’m too angry now to go get the chickens (who has chickens, anyway?) without a speech. I go over to the boy and plant myself directly between his glazedover eyes and the TV, now showing a commercial for Windex.

“HEY!” he screams, “you’re BLOCKING the TV!”

I draw myself up to full height (pretty intimidating) and say in an even, soft voice, “Danny. Can you see that you just spilled grape juice on me?” He blinks, looks over casually at the large splotch on the white cotton, and says nothing. “I am trying to clean up this mess and you are being very mean to me. You can’t order people around. It’s very rude.” He scrunches his eyebrows. “I would like you to say sorry and then come help me. And then, when you are putting the chickens back in, you can ask for my help by saying ‘Please’.”

He’s sheepish. He’s shocked. Maybe I can make a difference.

Yet even if I can, maybe I shouldn’t. Parenting is complicated and I don’t pretend to know anything other than what I have read in Seattle’s Child while waiting in the lobby at the dentist. The constant naggings which I got from my own mom when I was little – “Close your mouth when you chew, you’re schmutzing,” or, “No sticking your foot in people’s faces,” may seem reasonable to me only because they were ingrained into my psyche. Maybe the parents of these kids are ok with their children sticking feet in people’s faces. Or schmutzing.

Or maybe the kids are testing me. Madison, spitting that macaroni across the dinner table, is experimenting with her limits: how far can she push me, how long can she sing the Spongebob theme song before I tell her to please be quiet. Her parents may stop her after two verses, they may stop her after twenty. If I stop her after five, then that is forever my precedent – whatever I say, they will annoy for as long as possible until that point.

It is not my responsibility, or that of any other person forced to watch a child not their own, to reform. Yet it’s also not my responsibility to sit quietly when Claire kicks the dog and then hits me with her Polly Pocket. I will punish (calmly) when needed, I will look the other way when possible. And then I will go home and soak my shirt in Clorox.