CONWAY — Ringing the bell for The Salvation Army is a great study in human behavior.
Don’t worry; this is not a column about giving money to the organization.
My 17-year-old, who went with me to ring the bell for a while, said, “No, Mom. Don’t write about this. You’ve already written that preachy one.”
Ah, kids. Can’t live with ’em, can’t sell ’em on eBay.
Anyway, I found it to be a fascinating experience, so I’m ignoring his advice.
First of all, last week was weirdly warm (as I write this, snow flurries are possible on Christmas; yesterday was 70.)
What people were wearing ran the gamut from shorts and flip-flops to coats and boots, and that was a good topic of conversation for the three hours I was there.
Some people wore Santa hats; several women had on Christmas sweaters or earrings.
I commented on one woman’s Christmas-themed scrubs top, and she sort of did a cute pose.
She came out of the store and handed me a Hershey’s chocolate bar.
“I thought you might need this — I heard there was a chocolate shortage,” she said.
I loved it, because she was referring to a column I wrote a few weeks ago about the impending chocolate shortage. (And still no word from the president.)
Many people who looked like they might need The Salvation Army’s help put money in the kettle. So did teenage skateboarders. Some others, dressed to the nines and driving luxury cars, didn’t.
One woman smiled and apologized as she dropped in a few coins, saying, “I see you people all over town, and I give a little bit every time.”
I didn’t mind when someone didn’t donate — what bothered me was the people who turned their backs and didn’t answer when I said, “Have a merry Christmas!”
One woman put some money in the kettle and quietly said The Salvation Army had helped her years ago when she lived in Arizona.
Another woman came up and asked me if I knew a man, “Brother” somebody, but I didn’t.
She told me she was meeting him there to give him money for a family whose house had burned.
In a minute, they found each other. I saw her give him cash — at least $100 — and he asked if he could give her a hug. I watched as they embraced and parted.
Not 20 minutes later, a family walked up, and the man’s arms were bandaged and his face had scrapes. I shook my head in sympathy and asked the man’s wife if he’d been in a motorcycle accident (he was wearing a doo-rag, as I recall).
“No, it was a fire,” the woman said.
She told the tale of their porch catching on fire at their home in Crawford County, and how she couldn’t breathe, but she got out of the house, and then she had to pull her teenage son out of the kitchen when the smoke got so thick he couldn’t see. Part of the house fell on her husband, who suffered second-degree burns.
“It wasn’t much, but it was ours,” she said of the home.
They lost everything, she told me, except his mother’s Bible. Even their three dogs died in the fire.
The Salvation Army had given them vouchers for coats, shoes and clothes.
They went in to get her husband’s prescriptions filled, and when they came out, the son put some change in the kettle.
Yes, people are amazing.