Martha and I have started playing Monopoly online while we video chat. It's much nicer than phoning one another and the misunderstandings that tends to bring. One weekend I drove down to surprise her. I think I was still off work and living it up for one more week. I took some extra days off near the end of my convalescence to see her for her birthday. As per usual, I was at her house on Saturday while she worked at the hospital. I decided it would be fun to go out and run some errands. While I was out I picked up Monopoly: Here & Now Edition. It looked cool. I wanted to use the Prius piece. I'm a marketing whore. Put the word "new" on something in a yellow explosion outline and I'll try it. Well, Martha got home, and she saw the game and got excited, but not as much as I expected her to. She wanted to return it for the regular old Monopoly.
We got in the car and were on our way to return the game. In the return/exchange line she confided in me that she felt like a pettish child for wanting to return the game and not being satisfied with the gift she was given. We talked about the movie Babe and the little girl that cries because she doesn't get the dollhouse from the catalog she saw. Instead she gets a beautiful hand made dollhouse that is one of a kind and made with love.
I told Martha about when I was little and we were close to poor. I think this was after we had been using food stamps to get by. Anyway, we weren't well off by any means, but Mom got us through. We were shopping at Target for something after school and work. This was back when Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had just come out. We're talking old school ones. Before the White Ranger showed up, so super geeks can calculate a range of years by that information. The toys were the hottest thing. Those big action figures that didn't fit the scale of any of your other action figures. As if to say, "I'm the new kid on the block. Better get all of these or else you'll have a lone giant amongst your puny hero toys." The red ranger was my favorite, and I had to have it. I went back to the toy section by myself and found one! I took the oversized box back to my mom, and asked her if I could get it. She looked at it, and looked sad. Now, I think there might have been something else going on that I wasn't aware of, but I have no idea what. Perhaps money problems or problems with her current boyfriend. I don't know. Anyway, she simply said, "I'm too tired to argue with you about it." So, being a little kid I was like, "Cool! I win! Free toy!"
Even now, I feel a tinge of sickness welling up in me, and I just want to cry and tell her I'm sorry about that. If I could have I would have paid for it myself. If I had known what was going on I never would have asked. If I had been a more mature and caring child I wouldn't have this weight on me now when I think back on it.
I try and go out of my way to be nice to people. I often give up my own desires and happinesses so that others will feel fulfilled. I can think back on that incident and mull over how horrible I was as a child and feel sick to my stomach and sad. I do it often. Too often, perhaps. Mom got me two things that day: the red Power Ranger, and a crushing sense of humility. I think I sold one off, or gave it to one of my friends as the years went on. The other I keep close at all times. Whenever someone tells me I've done a good job, or when someone compliments my various talents I think back on that red Power Ranger. I smile, and thank them, but know that like the Power Ranger, that compliment will fade. I have to be happy with what I already had, and that will last much longer than any instant gratification.
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