Do we always do the right thing? For that matter, how do we even know what the “right” thing is? Sometimes we think we’re on the path to a good deed, but it might be a mistake. Who doesn’t want to be the hero, to save the day? I’m not even that nice of person, but I try to good when I can. The problem with some acts of random goodness, is that unless we’re there to see it through to the end, we don’t really know if what we did was the right thing after all.
Last night I was working on my resume (draft #217) in front of the TV. It was local news time, definitely not an incentive to watch, but at one point something did get through. I looked up to see a description of a car the police were looking for. It’s not something I would generally pay attention to, but it was an orange Cadillac with a cracked windshield. You don’t see a lot of orange Caddy’s so it stuck in my mind. I did not now then, nor do I know now, why police were looking for the car. It could have been stolen, involved in a crime, or the vehicle a dangerous criminal was last seen driving. It could be anything, but today when an orange Caddy pulled onto the highway in front of me, I took notice and now I’m not sure I should have.
I drove faster and spent several minutes trying to see the windshield. It didn’t appear to be cracked, but I couldn’t be sure. I wrote down the license plate number and spent a few more minutes watching the driver. It was a woman, maybe 30, black, attractive. I kept thinking that she did not look like someone who committed a crime and since I didn’t really see a crack I could be getting her in trouble for nothing. Still, there was this nagging voice that kept telling me to call it in, what if they got the windshield replaced or patched it up? What if whoever was wanted committed a violent crime and I could help catch him or her? I watched what exit she took off the interstate, then I pulled over and reported it to the police.
I felt good for about a minute, my good deed done, I drove a little faster, sat up a little straighter and believed that I might have contributed to the good in the world. Then it hit me, I had no idea what would happen next. That woman, that poor woman, just driving along on her lunch break or running an errand was about to get pulled over and possibly hassled because of me. The fact that she’s black was not lost on me either. She looked like any one of my friends and yet the possibility exists that she might have been treated unfairly or worse because she happened to be black and driving, an admittedly ugly, orange Cadillac. It’s stayed with me all day and the fact that I’ll never know what happened, if anything, is a killer.
So was my good deed good at all? My motives to do the “right” thing might not have even been pure. I admit it felt good for a moment to think I’d done something superior, reporting the car to the police was just as much vanity as good deed. I hope that either the police caught a bad person or they never went looking for her. I know that doing the right thing isn’t always the easy thing, but not sticking around for the end game just seems selfish and insincere. There might have been a crack in the windshield, but I didn’t see it. I just saw a woman I sold down the river. So much for good deeds.
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