Day 141: I'm Only Helping You if You Promise to Turn Out Well

There is a new Sandra Bullock movie coming out called “The Blind Side.” The movie tells the real life story of a well-to-do white Southern wife and mother who takes in a black street kid and magically changes his life. Every time I see the trailer I immediately want to run out and find my own secretly smart and gifted minority street kid and polish him or her up before sending the newly reborn bastion out into the world again. The story works like a practiced illusion, using misdirection to keep you focused on the points they want to make, rather than letting you realize the big picture.

What this movie tries to make you focus on is the generosity and reciprocal appreciation that develops in the relationship between the Mother and fostered teenager. It is an exceptional story involving exceptional people, but that’s just the point, the characters are exceptional and in real life sometimes people aren’t. I’m sure there are smart and gifted street kids out there that never got a chance, but I’m willing to bet that sometimes all the opportunities in the world won’t make a not bright kid smarter.

I realize it’s not politically correct to speak of the homeless or less fortunate in a negative way, let alone when it’s a kid, but there are dumb people in the world. I tried to order a salad at McDonald’s today and after that frustrating experience I can guarantee stupidity lives. In this movie, what is most exceptional to me, is the idea that a basically homeless and possibly abused teenager is so affected by having his own bedroom and a loving family that he suddenly becomes the ideal child. I know this is Hollywood and happy, fantastical endings are what it’s all about, but where is the story about an exceptional woman who takes in an unexceptional child simply because it is the right thing to do?

Everyone wants bright and shiny. We want to adopt babies, not toddlers or older children. We want to believe that if you throw enough money, love and education at a child he or she will grow up to be President or a human rights activist, but that’s not always the case. This might be an exceptional story about exceptional people, but who helps the random street kid or the homeless guy with battered and diseased feet who reeks like a toilet? Is the story more remarkable because it is a white family who takes in a black kid? Is it more valuable because the child turned out to be smart and talented?

Stories like this one make all of us stop and think. We think about who we are and if we’d be exceptional enough to act in the same way as the heroic characters on the screen. Like an illusionist’s trick, however, while we’re all marveling at these amazing people and their amazing acts, we’re missing the point. The real moral to the story isn’t if you’d take a chance on this kid in the same situation, it’s if you believe all people less fortunate than you deserve a little consideration and kindness regardless of the outcome.