A public school teacher made clear to me
the complex ideas of giving and
receiving.
Evidently she
noticed something about the way I held the book in reading
class and arranged for an eye examination. She did not send me
to a clinic; she took me to her own oculist, not as a charity
case but as a friend. Indeed, I was so intrigued with the
activity that I did not realize exactly what had happened
until one day at school she gave me the
glasses.
"I can't take them. I
can't pay for them," I said, embarrassed by my family's
poverty.
She told me a story:
"When I was a child, a neighbor bought glasses for me. She
said I should pay for them someday by getting glasses for some
other little girl. So, you see, the glasses were paid for
before you were born."
Then the teacher said
the most welcome words that anyone had ever said to me:
"Someday you will buy glasses for some other little
girl."
She saw me as a giver.
She made me responsible. She believed I might have something
to offer to someone else. She accepted me as a member of the
same world she lived in. I walked out of that room, clutching
the glasses, not as a recipient of charity, but as a trusted
courier.
~Billie Davis
