The Hidden Payment

I have this problem.   I’m really actually too nice, generally.   When someone asks me for something and frames the request in the sense of a favor, I can seldom say no.

It isn’t that I’m too timid to stand up for myself, it is just that I do endeavor to try to be an okay human being.   I think of the number of times I’ve been fixing a car or lawnmower or building something – and how that extra pair of helpful hands is sorely missed.   Many hands, light work and all that jazz.  

This need to be helpful also stems from the experience of my father in law’s funeral.    I was struck by the 1 hour wait line and probably 600 people that came to see him off into the great adventure beyond life.  It was comprised of some family, a lot of friends and many-many people in the community that he touched through selfless action and general “Helpfulness.”

Early in the year, a friend of a friend opened a pawnshop near my old house.  I stopped by, I’m always looking for used tools, camera stuff, computer things or electronics I can dismantle and use for a project.

I talked to the shop-owner for about 45 minutes and our action items from that discussion were that

A)It would really help him out if I sold some of the stuff I was about to put on Craigslist as a spring-cleaning endeavor, on consignment.   Essentially giving him “inventory”

B)It would be really really extra helpful if I didn’t mind taking some photos of his shop for his facebook page/website.

I did both.

The consignment sale was… a bit of a nightmare but I’ll go into that later.

One afternoon, in favorable light, I found myself in front of his shop with my camera.  It was a bad week, I was super-busy and behind on all sorts of “real job” tasks.  I really didn’t want to be there, I really didn’t want to provide commercial photography stuff for free,  I was really annoyed with how the consignment stuff was going and I was generally starting to feel used.  

Still, my word is what it is, so I put on my smile and walked around the shop for about an hour photographing things.    

Camera work, really is therapy for me and before the hour was out, I got some pretty neat shots, like this one, which – looking back now.. is all the payment for the inconvenience of it all that I need.

..and maybe on the great Karmic scoreboard of my life, “the day you helped out the pawnshop” will work to negate the less-helpful things I do in life.   

Not that I put too much faith in works but ya know, that’s a different topic as well.