God Damn DoGooders

Midnight Walk, originally uploaded by Sabine Dukes.

The nice thing about emergency situations, is that you get to see a lot of acts of kindness.

There sure are some amazingingly kind people.

The people who run the Corralitos Community Church came down as soon as the evacuation orders went out and opened their doors so that people had a place to go, and bathrooms and they made sandwiches and passed out water to everyone.

The folks from Gayles Bakery came by and dropped off a bunch of food.

Neighbors helped each other with rescuing pets and arranging lodging and finding missing family members.

And, this was all hours before Red Cross showed up.

After that, I witnessed people coming into Corralitos and dropping off fresh baked goods and offering their homes.

I was so touched by all of the acts of kindness that I was seeing, that I got all verklempt and I wanted to be a dogooder too. I was all weepy eyed and touched and I was probably PMSing, but I didn't care. At that moment, I wanted to be good too.

So, as I snuck back into my house by cutting into the fire caravan, I was thinking of ways to be good. I looked back at the fireman I had just cut off and decided I wanted to thank them. I decided to make a big sign and put it up by the mailbox.

So, I got home and found an old road barrier sign thingie that I stole for cyclocross, and got some pens that I borrowed and never returned to Laura and thought about the sign.

Then I checked email, and grabbed some clean socks and sportsbras (I was NOT wearing my mom's socks and underwear thankyouverymuch) and drank a beer, and cursed the trees that were close to my house, and watered the stupid apple tree that won't grow and hopped in the car and left.

I forgot all about the sign. So much for my pledge to be a dogooder. I didn't even last 30 minutes as a dogooder.

I was feeling like a dogooder failure, until Monday night. I got the fun chance to help teach beginners (which seems silly since I am still a beginner myself) on how to ride at the track. People kept thanking us for being there, but really it was me who should have been doing the thanking. Nothing like feeling helpful to help you when you are feeling helpless.

Turns out, all my neighbors made signs thanking the firefighters. There are signs all over our street and on our little mailbox corner, there are four signs alone. Not as cute as I would have made with my stolen sign and pens, but cute enough.