Waldo Pizza and the Teachable Moments

by

Patti Dickinson

Waldo Pizza --- a destination place for a family dinner. The best raspberry iced tea in town, and the pizza is good as well. We all ordered, and played Kansas City Trivia with the cards on the booth table. "What does KCAI stand for?" Kansas City Art Institute. "What restaurant was at One Ward Parkway?" Sydney's Diner. And so it went. The pizza came, and as it turned out the waitress made a mistake and put in our order for 2 - 12" pizzas instead of 2 10" pizzas. She charged us for the smaller pizzas, but left us with two boxes of leftover pizza. As we walked to the car, I said, "Hey, let's drive down to the Plaza and give our leftovers to the homeless guys who are down there." A way to help someone who needed a warm meal in their stomach, and save me the inevitable pangs of guilt when I threw out the leftovers two days from now.

So we drove to the Plaza. The homeless man was on my side of the car, and my 15 year old daughter, Meghan, sitting behind me said, "I'll give it to him." Totally unlike her.....usually a quiet, reluctant kid. As she handed it out the window, with "Here's a cheese pizza!" he yelled, "Thank you....thanks....and God bless." We circled the block and found another homeless man on the median down the center of a busy street. My seventeen year old son, Andrew, said, "I'll get out." He bailed out of the back seat and ran across the street....handed the pizza to the man, had another brief exchange of words and bolted back toward our car before the light changed.

Quiet in the car. Meghan says, "Boy, that felt good." Agreement all around. Made me teary with the power of the moment.....one person can make a difference. One person at a time. We stepped outside our comfort zone. I didn't want this to be a cliche moment. How blessed we are....blah blah blah. We talk about that all the time. No, this time I wanted the kids to know that the homeless are often mentally ill, and what it must be like to feel the humiliation of standing on a street corner, with all your belongings on your back, wondering if you were going to get a meal that night. How the paradigm of the homeless is the here and now. Where I can sleep tonight, and where the next meal is coming from. No plans for a week from now. Their lives are measured in the next few hours.