Pay It Forward

[pokerfan]

I just made a couple of posts on a Heinlein thread and it got me to thinking about Pay It Forward:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward

So about 12 years ago I decide to stretch my legs while my father is dying inside the hospital. So I start walking around the hospital and begin plugging parking meters that looked low. For karma, you know?

So this meter dude in his little three wheel meter dude cart stops and calls me over to to his little three wheel meter dude cart and tells me me that I can't do what I'm doing.

This is the fucking last thing I need right now. I ask, "I can't do what?"

He said, "Putting all those coins into all those meters. I've been watching you."

I am stunned. Absolutely flabbergasted. I pay taxes so this guy can watch me plug meters?

So I say, "You mean I can't take this quarter, which I own, that I earned, which is my personal property, and put it into this meter?" while I did just that.

He told me that I must "cease and desist" or that he "have me arrested."

"Arrested for what?!"

Well it turns out to be an infraction in my town to feed coins into meters for cars that are not yours.

The conversation kinda devolved from there. I remember calling him a "Barney Fife" at one point and that did not improve things.

I eventually backed down from actual arrest because, as I told him, I had to get back in time to watch my father die.

So in terms of Pay It Forward, does my random act of kindness include NOT kicking his supercilious ass into the fucking the pavement?

Pay It Forward indeed.

[Joe Fields]

1. Only in America. I heard a story on the news a couple of days ago,

about a good semeritan in St.Joe Missouri, who witnessed a man beating a woman in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. It was late at night, and the guy who saw it was with his wife in the drive-thru. He gets out of his car to help the woman. The woman tells him to mind his own business. The man asks, "Are you serious? He's beating the hell out of you." She told him that her boyfriend was finished, and that everything was okay." So, this guy walks back toward his car. The woman beater walks over to the guy, turns him around, says, "I'm gonna stick you," and stabs the sameritan right in the chest. As the guy lays on the parking lot, bleeding, he hears the woman tell her boyfriend, "come on honey, you've got warrants." And they hop in a car and drive around this poor guy.

Pay it forward? I don't know anymore.

[datasuspect]

3. i was standing across the street from a guy beating what i presume was his SO

and a detective car was right at the light, between me and the fracas.

i tapped the window (which seemed to piss the cop off) and pointed in the direction of the public domestic violence.

he rolled the window down and said, "and?" and then sped off.

some youngish thugs walked by and intervened and within 2 minutes a patrol unit was on the scene. the narco must have radioed it in.

[datasuspect]

2. bureaucratic pattern recognizing nincompoops hell bent on compliance

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