Hopeful Hearts Ministry

I felt like I was playing a role in an episode of “What Would You Do?” this morning.  Have you ever seen this show?  An actor plays the part of a foolish person who doesn’t know how they look or sound, how offensive they are being or the actor is a plant to see if the general public will step in and be good Samaritans or show good morals in a given situation.

My role was the ‘actor’ but I didn’t know this was my role until at least 40 minutes into it. 

It began when Ryan and I started out at 6am for the Metro Park & Ride.  I had been up since 3:30am for my adoration (prayer) hour and chose to stay up since I knew we had this adventure planned so I went and exercised a bit before leaving.  We were going to test out the Houston Metro system and see how long it would take to get to St. Thomas High School and for him to feel more comfortable with which bus to take and where to be, etc.

I get on the bus manned only with a $20 bill and the bus driver looks at me with wide eyes.  “That machine won’t give you change!”  I drew back the $20 as if the machine bit me. 

“We are doing a trial bus ride for when he goes to school,” I said, not necessarily meaning to plead but more as a ‘this is why I’m an idiot’ comment. 

She waved us on.  “Don’t worry about it.  Go on.”    First leg of the trip – FREE – EASY

“Crawford and Congress is the stop we need,” I said to Ryan and then saw it flash in red on the sign at the front of the bus.  This comforted me because I felt it was simply saying ‘This bus is the bus you take to Crawford and Congres…where it will stop first.’

But it wasn’t speaking my language.  I see that we are entering downtown so I expect she’ll stop at any time for the first stop.  But then I see the sign at the front change to another street, and then another, and then another before I finally clued in and realized she’d passed our stop!  About this time I see the sign say ” STOP REQUESTED”

What?  I had to request the stop even though it said we were going to stop?  I grabbed Ryan and told him to get off the bus.  We got off as quickly as we could and then I grabbed the first person that walked by us and asked which direction I needed to head to get to Congress & Crawford.  Turns out we were about 7 blocks from our original destination.

Thankfully we found it easily, Ryan saw where he was supposed to be dropped off and how he only needed to walk the one block to get to the second bus that takes him to St. Thomas.  While we waited for the 2nd bus I had to find a place to change my $20 because I was pretty certain I wouldn’t keep getting free rides.  A bail bonds place was my only option and the second I walked in the door the guy behind the counter said, “Hey you have change for a $20?”

“What? No,” I said.  “I was going to ask you the same thing.” 

“Oh, well I guess the guy in the parking lot will have it.” Then he rushes out from behind the counter and says, “But I’m going to get to him before you because I need that change.”

Still equipped with my Nike’s I hightailed it past him and said, “Oh no you’re not!”  (No, I’m not making this up. 🙁 )  I ran outside and into the empty parking lot and finally found a man in a big floppy hat helping someone who’d just pulled into the lot.  “Do you have change for a $20?” I said breathlessly as the man from the Bail Bonds ran up behind me. 

“Well I will for you but I don’t normally do this,” he said as he gave me my change.

Five minutes to spare and our second bus pulled up to the curb.  The bus driver asked where we were headed, we told her and before she was at our stop she hollered out to us, “This will be your stop!  Don’t miss it!” 🙂  How did she know….

Second leg of trip  – $2.50 – A learning experience

We disembarked the bus and walked up to the school.  Ryan checked his watch and saw he still had about 20-25 minutes to play with in regards to which bus he took from Kingwood.  We didn’t stay long and we saw how to catch the inner city bus back to where we felt we could catch an Outbound bus from Downtown to Kingwood.  This was where I went wrong.  I couldn’t really read the schedule well for outbound  and though I figured it out easily for Ryan if he were to ever need to take the bus home during the afternoon it wasn’t so easy to try and catch a morning outbound bus.

7:55am I figure out we have been waiting for 10 minutes at the afternoon outbound Kingwood bus spot.  I called the Metro station for help and the lady directed me to a stop that was the last morning outbound to Kingwood (on that line).  It left at 8:04am.  We had to run 10 blocks and we simply didn’t make it.  With another phone call to Metro I found out that where we had originally waited before we began to run there was another outbound that would go to Kingwood but not until 9:01am.  This one stopped at every Park & Ride on the Eastex freeway but it was our only option home unless we wanted to wait till 3:04pm. 

Defeated Ryan and I went into a corner Deli and got a bite to eat.  While eating Ryan says to me, “I can’t believe you didn’t plan for the trip home.”

My look said it all.  He got quiet and the next thing he said was, “Thank you for doing this and taking me.”  Mmm hmmm

There was one last thing I had to do before we got on another bus and take another hour to get home….use the restroom.  But we were downtown.  No one has a restroom open to the public.  The ladies at the Deli looked at me like I was crazy.  I told Ryan to wait and I walked two blocks before I found a Starbucks that had a restroom.  It was locked.  Okay…there are a lot of homeless souls walking around, I’m sure they were looking for a place to go.  But I was clearly not homeless so I felt it was a no-brainer to let me use the facility.  However, when I asked the manager literally looked me up and down and said, “Facilities are only for paying customers.”

Hmmm…I couldn’t understand why she would look at me like that and be so stern.  “Um, okay. I can pay, no problem.”  I stood in line, grabbed a smoothie from the refrigerated case and stood in line.  When I got to the register I paid for my drink and said, “And I’d like to use the restroom.  The young woman looked at me and the original manager was behind her.  They both fumbled around with the key and then the manager said, “Well, I’ll go unlock it for you.”

By now I’m thinking, “What is going on?  Am I that offensive without make up on?”

“Sorry,” the manager said as she unlocked the door.  “We just have to be careful. We never know.”

“Thank you,” I said determined to prove I had good character.  “I understand.”

I walked into the bathroom and then saw my reflection in the mirror.  My headband that had been near my forehead when I started out the day was now sitting on top of my head and it looked like a little hat, strands of hair were popping out everywhere and my shirt was tattered and stretched from too much wear.  I looked like a bum.  I had looked particularly this haggard since Ryan and I had been running to catch the last bus out to Kingwood.  Ryan, oblivious, sat with me and ate breakfast without saying a word.