This is the one with my mistake.
At my work, we have this five-year-old that we’ll call Matthew. Matthew’s 11-year-old sister died of Leukemia in October and their mother is devastated. The mom works as a housekeeper at a local hotel, and makes very little money, and before the death was spending all of her free time in the hospital.
I had a contact at a local online university and told her all about the horrible things that Matthew’s family has been going through in the past few months, and she told me that her co-workers at the local online university would do a food drive and collect things to give to Matthew and his family for Thanksgiving.
I told Matthew’s mom not to worry about Thanksgiving this year, that some people were going to take care of everything for her. And I specifically told her that there was going to be a turkey (this detail comes into play in a couple of paragraphs).
I arrange for the donations to be delivered yesterday, which happens to be the same day as our Club’s community Thanksgiving Dinner (mistake #1), and I let Matthew’s family know that they should come by to pick up all of the stuff when they come to eat dinner with us.
So Monday night is happening…I’m running around like a crazy person. The worst kind of crazy person: A crazy in a tie. And someone yells, “Hey Mike, Matthew’s dad is here.” So I talk to the guy a little. Walk him to my office and explain which boxes are his to take, and I notice that Matthew’s dad is wearing house slippers.
“That’s kind of tacky,” I think. “He wore his house shoes to our Thanksgiving Dinner?” But whatever.
And as Matthew’s dad is loading up his car, Matthew’s mom walks in with her older son and I tell her the same thing I told Dad. We had about 6 boxes of food and a big turkey for them. I warned them ahead of time that it was going to be a lot of food, so I was glad she brought so many men to help her carry it out.
Skip ahead thirty minutes to an hour.
Matthew’s mom politely motions me over. “I don’t want to be pushy or rude,” she said. “But is there going to be a turkey?”
“Yeah,” I said. And then I looked at the table of people sitting with her. I was about to say your husband took the turkey and one box of food, but then I remembered that she doesn’t have a husband. And her non-husband wasn’t even sitting with them.
I gave the turkey to some unknown man in house slippers!
Matthew’s family had no idea what to expect as far as food, so they wouldn’t miss the box of food that the house slipper bandit took, but she was expecting a turkey. I specifically told her not to go out and buy one. Damn it.
This story has a happy ending though: We had 16 turkeys donated for our Thanksgiving feast last night, and only cooked 15 of them for the dinner. I was going to raffle off the last turkey to one family, but I just gave it to Matthew’s family before they left. And I raffled off a bike that was donated a few months ago. And chances are, the house slipper guy probably needed the food.
