I thank myself for that day. I keep thinking over and over that I would have felt so bad, and I wasn’t able to find it in my heart to let the man die. He would have died, unwillingly and unaware. He wasn’t just another homeless man, and I’m sure he was unconscious about the situation he was in, so I decided to help.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the listeria-contaminated cantaloupes or melons in the United States. Well, you see, about a month ago, I was surfing the internet for recent deaths and information related to that, when I saw an article that read, “Another Death Linked to Contaminated Melons”. I was wondering what it was about, so I read it completely. I informed my father about it and suggested that he informed the rest of my family as soon as possible. The next day, my dad was taking us to visit my aunt, and as we stopped on a red light close to the dollar store, also known as “The Dollar Tree” on Sebastopol Road, I saw a family in a van handing out cantaloupes to a homeless man in particular. Suddenly, I remembered what I had read, and I asked for my dad to pull over. We parked in the dollar store’s parking lot, and we approached the homeless man. My dad accompanied me, as he knew what I wanted. My dad explained to him, that only a few weeks ago, the news announced that cantaloupes were contaminated and if he ate the cantaloupe, it was highly probable that he would get sick and die. The man understood and disposed of the cantaloupe in a plastic bag. We gave him some soap and water so that he would be able to wash his hands. We also gave him an orange, a water bottle, and twenty-five dollars. We told him to go buy some food or something of his choice.
The homeless man was thankful for our generous act and thanked us for about ten minutes. I understand that he was thankful, but truly, I was thankful for myself; I was thankful that I had run into that article coincidentally. That particular article contained a homeless man’s fate, but the fact that I’d seen him at the right moment, in the right place, at the right time, was absolutely not a coincidence. I’d realized that when you see something’s wrong, and there’s something you can do to correct it, you correct it. I realized this death would not have been just another life taken away. Not just another life.