Yesterday, after a full day of lunching on Hawaiian french toast and studying in the grass, my friend Sara Beth and I walked from campus to our sorority house on the row. We were stuffed, but there was an In N’ Out burger truck that our sorority had stationed at the back of a fraternity as a prize for winning our philanthropy event about a month ago. It was originally just for the boys, but because of the amount of people that were still at Coachella, the philanthropy chair announced that Theta was allowed to partake in the nom-nom-merriment. Free food from the most famous burger joint in California... we could definitely find room in our stomachs for that! We skipped to the parking lot in the back of the frat to find the smell of animal style grilled onions cooking, several sun kissed Theta sisters, and frat tank clad SoCal boys balancing their longboards and food.
After scarfing, chitter chatter, and making friends with the supervisor of the truck “Jerry”, I joined the group of Theta lovelies strolling back to our house. Not to anyones surprise, after only 5 minutes of sitting at the study tables, myself and 3 other of the Theta “food-ies” decided that we NEEDED seconds. We headed back for the truck. After a few seconds of joining the line, one of my best friends Claire came up to me and whispered, “Danielle... There is a man and his little kid on the other side of the truck. I wish we could find a way to share the food with them but we only get one food ticket each, so I don’t know how.” The pack of girls she came with called for her to walk home with them and she reluctantly walked away but shouted a, “See if there’s a way!” over her shoulder as she went.
What the what? A man, where, and what? Unsure of anything she had just said, I walked to the back of the truck to try and de-cloud my brain. A man was bent over with his body half inside a dumpster. His little boy (probably not much older than 3) with two huge streams of dirt encrusted boogies running down his upper lip stood holding an old toy wagon at his fathers feet. He looked like a messy male version of Boo from Monsters Inc. Their clothes were dirty and old, and their wagon was filled with plastic water bottles, aluminum cans, and other random scraps of trash that could be traded for coins at a recycling center. I skidded back to the frat house side of the truck as the father began to turn around to hide my gaping jaw. The smell of the truck and the sound of our carefree laughs must have been torture for that daddy to hear.
Jerry the In N’ Out man startled me with his big voice, “Back again?! What am I going to do with you!?”
I replied, “Oh geez I don’t know Jerry. I’ll have two double cheese double patties with all the fixings and chips.”
His big bushy brows shot up.
“Oh, and also, I ate my food tickets. Sorry. I’m super hungry Jerry. Sorority girl problems!”
Apparently we had plenty of burgers to go around because he complied without a blink. While the food was being prepared, I went back to the alley and saw that the man and his son had moved several dumpsters down. I ran down to them to tell them to please stay put for 10 minutes and found that the man also had two daughters with him! I thought... “oh boy... Jerry is going to love me.”
After whispering that I needed two more, what I was doing, and that I was sorry for asking him to go against the rules, Jerry stepped back and shouted, “Two more! You eat more than anyone I have ever seen before! Put two more on Jim!” (I gave him a playful-- “thanks Jerry... it’s not like the horde of attractive boys behind me are listening or anything!” look.) Turns out Jerry has three kids too. One wants to become a dancer, one loves books, and his little boy is a tough man “like his old man.”
As I approached the dumpster, the whole family was engrossed in picking up plastic ties that are used to tie chain link fences together (usually used during the giant “registered” parties) off of the floor around a dumpster. The dad saw me with the boxes and immediately began washing his children's dirt splotched hands with a water bottle. I have never seen a three year old so eager to eat. While the father and son chowed down the two little girls eagerly insisted on knowing my name, which one of these houses was my home (I got to point to the Theta house picture above), and what my grandma’s name was. The older of the little girls (probably about 6) wore a plastic crown with matted pink feathers. She told me that their mom was at work, that she wanted to be a Hello Kitty princess when she grew up, and that she liked when I called myself “Daniela” better than when I called myself “Danielle.”
The sun was setting and my unmemorized flashcards filled with exercise science equations were becoming impatient for my attention back at Theta, so I politely excused myself and wished them “bon appetite.” The little boy put down his burger and clasped his chubby little hands to the front of my sun dress.
“Anellle!”
“Um? Sure! That too! Goodbye!”
“Anelle?”
“Oh! Yes! My name is Danielle! Goodbye!”
He smiled and released me, but then seemed to remember something. He screamed “Anelle! Anelle! Anelle!” as he scrambled back toward the wagon. He came back with the little pile of plastic fence ties that he had collected and rose up on his tippy toes to give them to me.
“Oh thank you! But you can keep them! You worked hard for those, so you should keep them!”
He smiled again and we shouted “Goodbye!” back and forth after each five steps I took away from him.
I have so much and it has nothing to do with any kind of hard work or talent or luck. It is entirely God’s grace. I don’t know why I was born into a position where when I was three, I was playing with my mother’s feet as she got her weekly manicure done while this little boy is scratching up his fingertips picking up trash to help his daddy make ends meet. But spending that short time looking into his big brown eyes reiterated things I have always known--
1.) Make sure the people you call your friends, are people with big hearts that see things that you don’t... that bring things to your attention when you are too wrapped up in the sunshine and giggles to notice.
2.) It doesn’t matter who you are, everyone loves In N’ Out.
3.) When we are little, we can’t wait to share with those that share with us. It’s when we get older that the stinginess comes into play. Don’t let yourself get older in that respect.
4.) No human will ever know why they were born into the circumstances they were. It’s all grace and it’s all a mystery. If you were born on this side of the food truck with a longboard and free burger in your hand (as I’m sure everyone reading this was)-- all we can say is “thanks God, I love you.”
**photo by Claire Adams
The little boy you described reminds me of Zack. This just made me feel even more blessed to have married the man I did and to the Navy for keeping my family fed and happy. Thanks for this.
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