Am I really that unhelpful?

Have you ever been to busy to help someone out? What if you looked back and said, ‘man, I really should have helped them out’? Is that regret really more than just a superficial guilt? It’s probably not the gnawing guilt, the kind that just eats away at you for years, in most cases – unless the situation results in someone’s demise or some similar misfortune.

I’m as guilty as anyone else, to be honest – of turning away, turning my head, turning it around, turning down the opportunity to change a person’s luck. I’ve never been the kind to give money to someone asking for it; nowadays I don’t even carry real money on me, it’s just not that convenient anymore. But let’s go ahead and bring it closer to home. There have been a few instances recently where I was literally unable to help people out because I was working. Always on a Saturday, always earlier in the day, and I feel like a douche because I say yes to them and then I get told the day before that instead of not working, which was the plan, I have to work and so I have to pull out on them.

But what about just shirking that humane capacity for helping out due to the very human capacity to be selfish? I know I’ve done it, I just can’t remember when or what the situation was; you’ll have to excuse my memory, the narcolepsy has made it into Swiss cheese. I keep thinking of a situation in which I could have shared, but didn’t – when I worked at Erie Industries in Ferndale, Michigan, there was a custom we had; I would go around and take breakfast orders on Friday morning and then I would call and order them, and pick them up from the Omega, a corner greasy-spoon Coney Island. They had this fantastic omelette called the “Hulios” omelette. It had ground beef, onions, jalapeños, chili, and cheese, and then you’d get these hash brown potatoes and some toast and that was just the breakfast to end all breakfasts. Those of us who dared the Hulios called it “Hulio Friday”. I had a co-worker ask me for a taste before, and he was known to be something of a mooch, so I was all, “ain’t nobody gettin’ none of my Hulio!”

Oh, how I miss the Hulios omelette.

The truth is, when someone asks me for help, and I can give it, my tendency is to do so. Why? I don’t feel like lying my way out of it. “Sorry, I’m busy” doesn’t come naturally to me, because when it’s not true I feel like a liar and I’m a more honest person like that.

I have no clue where that comes from.

This post was prompted by today’s Daily Post prompt.