London Food Bank Challenge: Part 2 - The long road toward empathy

I was asked to take the London Food Bank Challenge recently and spend only $30 for a week’s groceries in much the same way families do that earn less than $20,000 per year.

I smelled Pulitzer, said OK, created a shopping list, bought my grub for the week, wrote and submitted my column (moments ago and on the right side of the deadline) to The Londoner about my experience.

However, I didn’t write about how it felt to don a frilly apron and do my own cooking for a change or how closely I was able to stick to my $30 budget.

Sure, good stories both, but even as I wrote my short grocery list, and I do mean short, I began to feel uneasy about my motives, and other things, so went in a different direction instead.

I was partly influenced by Greg’s post about the matter (at From My Bottom Step by fowgre) and my own conscience, which surprisingly sounded a lot like my Mother when she told me, at age four, I should eat the crusts of my toast because there were starving children In India who didn’t even have that much for breakfast.

(If I recall correctly, I told her that if they wanted my crusts they could have them. Smart ass right from the get go, eh?)

Greg was right when he wrote:

“One week is hardly enough time to gain much of an appreciation for the kinds of choices that have to be made on such a low income.”

Though my Mother was correct as well I wrote that we tend to grow our cities and economies in wasteful and unsustainable ways, thereby leaving many citizens far behind.

If there is a road toward empathy for others I don’t think our society as a whole is on it.

Next column: Do I go with two emails or a possible threat to national security?

Two days ago I mentioned an email from Alex L. and yesterday my reply.

I think I handled things pretty well, didn’t blow my stack or tear a strip off the guy etc., though for a second or two I really wanted to... just once!

I think I might use the little back and forth as fodder for my next column because there are a couple of things Alex said about me that still stick in my craw.

First, he mentioned that at the age of 10 he “knew the adults were crazy [and] willfully blind to what was obvious to any child 40 or 50 years ago, that the path our society was on was unsustainable.” 

His words stung.

When I was 10, not only did I not know an unsustainable path from a hole in the ground, if someone had asked me about the path society was on I would have pointed to Highway 59, the main route out of town.

And I was way too busy playing catch, delivering papers or cutting our huge lawn with a stupid push mower to look up ‘unsustainable’ in the dictionary.


I did know, however, that adults were crazy. The clothes they wore were not rad at all. Not even neato.

Second, Alex laid one on me about the title of the piece, that in it I was “telling everyone else NOW we should get ready to act ("get ready" to act - ?!).”

Hey, my editor picked that title, not me.

The original was something like “Got five minutes and seven bucks? Have I got a deal for you.”

Not too exciting, I admit.

Maybe I should go with a completely different story.

If I can prove Tim Horton’s recent decision to use self-serve coffee machines is a threat to national security, maybe even mass insecurity, I may have a winner.

gah