Attention Superhero Newswire

Yes, yes, I know that this isn’t hero­ism, it’s just plain base­line cit­i­zen­ry, but in sub­scrib­ing to the idea that self-esteem comes from esteemable acts (yes, I know that “esteemable” isn’t a real word, but I did­n’t make up the slo­gan) I’m try­ing to take note of the things I do right. So, not to toot my own horn, but just to report what I do right and encour­age myself to continue.

Yes­ter­day I saw a cred­it card on the ground at the cor­ner of 15^th and Church Streets. First I just shrugged it off and crossed the street. I had two irra­tional fears: first that it might not be a real cred­it card and that I’d look fool­ish pick­ing it up, and sec­ond that pick­ing it up might be seen as sus­pi­cious. Not that any­one was watch­ing me, but like I said, irra­tional fears. It’s “safer” to just keep eyes front and keep walk­ing, no mat­ter what.

Then I thought about it more and turned and crossed the street back to the cor­ner where I’d seen the card. I picked it up, and sure enough, it was a bank deb­it card with major cred­it card com­pa­ny’s logo and holo­graph­ic imprint. It was not expired and looked total­ly valid.

I called the num­ber on the back for “lost and stolen cards” and gave my name and num­ber. I’d done this once before and had been instruct­ed to destroy the card, but this time I was asked if I would be will­ing to leave my name and num­ber and have the card­hold­er call me to retrieve it. It was a bit of a sur­prise, but I told her I’d be OK with that. Today I met the card­hold­er at a cof­feeshop near where I found the card and gave it to him.

In oth­er news I wit­nessed an auto­mo­bile acci­dent last night, a half-block away from my house. A four-door BMW backed out of a park­ing space and into a Cel­i­ca parked across the street, leav­ing a severe crunch in the front cor­ner pan­el of the Cel­i­ca, then took off down the hill with­out even check­ing for dam­age. I only got a few dig­its of the license plate, but I got that record­ed and tried to leave a note for the Cel­i­ca’s own­er. It was rain­ing so hard that the ink was run­ning on the paper before I fin­ished writ­ing it. So in frus­tra­tion I went home and looked up the non-emer­gency police depart­ment num­ber and called it in. Seems like an imper­fect solu­tion – if the own­er of the Cel­i­ca does­n’t report the acci­dent to the police, they’ll nev­er make that con­nec­tion. But if he or she does, the police have that infor­ma­tion. And who knows, maybe the police will fol­low up on that any­way. Leav­ing the scene of an acci­dent is a crime, isn’t it?

So again, not so much of a hero as a tat­tle­tale, but hey, it’s my neigh­bor­hood. It both­ers me that some­one would cause dam­age and just try to slip off into the night with­out tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty. If I saw it hap­pen and did­n’t report it, that would make me an accom­plice, would­n’t it?

I’m a bit ashamed that my first impulse in each case was to just keep going and pre­tend I had­n’t seen any­thing. Per­haps, though, if I prac­tice doing the things I think are right, even­tu­al­ly they might become my “first impulse” instead of avoidance.