OFFERED:  Used dog ball and toys

I found that gem on my local Hackney Freecycle, a terrific website designed to unite people needing stuff with people getting rid of stuff (see lessons learned on British plastic bags for a glimpse into the exciting world of marital bliss).

Can you imagine the dog whose owner collected on that offer?   Maybe a pug or Chihuahua accessory to an East London vintage girl; or perhaps some adoring chocolate lab at the heels of her strapping student master.  Imagine now its utter shame, entering the gate to Victoria Park, a hand-me-down dog ball for a toy. What latte drinking dog owner could be so cruelly cheap as to save the price of a dog ball?

But that’s only the start.  These are dogs, not people.   Imagine the poor dog’s pulse quickening in fear, its master blithely cocking his arm to toss the ball.  Imagine the fear of that poor dog!  It knows.  It knows from the holes in the used dog ball and it knows from the ball’s scent.  That ball belonged to a rotweiler. Or maybe a raging Doberman-pit bull mix.  That ball belonged to 50 kilos of canine killing power and there now is his owner, about to toss that ball out into the park. Imagine that poor dog scanning the horizon, scanning scanning scanning for the ball’s former owner to cock his head at the first whiff of his long lost toy and the simpering runt of a pooch running after the thing.

Now, where do I go with this?  How about the topic of fear?  We humanitarians struggle to convey what is often the most damaging element of life caught in crisis, the years of waiting for violence to leap out from behind the curtain of poverty and desolation.  It’s relatively easy to convey starvation, disease or actual violence , but for the most part, protracted, pervasive fear remains invisible to medical data and escapes capture in a photo.  Recall that time somebody appeared behind you on a dark street?  Now elongate that momentary distress over years.  Or maybe it’s the life of a Palestinian child who wets himself every time an olive branch bangs against the zinc roof of his home.

 That was a diversion, a case of indulging my solemn side. 

I’ve seen lots of oddball stuff on offer at Hackney Freecycle – pavement slabs, broken darkroom equipment, 17 assorted felt cuttings – but that used dog ball takes the proverbial cake.  It struck me as an icon for the limits of do-gooderism.  It’s a story of how the feeling of goodness surpasses actually having done some good.

My wife and I have been experiencing the sense of being good as a result of our giving.  It took me by surprise, as I’d been getting more and more miffed as time constraints killed off my plans to sell much of it.  So up onto the Freecycle website went the items we couldn’t carry over to the Salvation Army.  Often, the phone rings almost immediately, so eager are people.   

These are people with stories:  Joe, binding a stack of heavy duty moving boxes for his garden (??) and then carrying on the train to Dagenham; Enrico, starting a new business, sputtering off with a heap of ring-binders; or the fantastic Veronica, heading to the bus stop with our 180 cm tall book shelf (translation for the metric-impaired from showing-off American:  approx. six feet), the first piece of furniture for her new apartment.   A bookshelf on a London bus!  I wonder if the driver dared challenge her determination.   These are people who are grateful and seemingly thrilled with the idea of getting something useful for free. 

And there stood my wife and I, like proud parents, our furniture going out into the world, each piece a helping hand in the untold thousands of fresh starts happening right here in our little corner.  We basked in the glow of the giver, modern day Johnny Appleseeds.  Somewhere, a former dog ball owner is doing the same.

Next blog:  Part II on this topic, because that sense of doing good is what pays my rent.