(Photo courtesy of Google)
He looked young. Maybe 16 at the oldest, 13 at the youngest. He came up to my register and put down a single candy bar. I rang up the item after my usual greeting. “Your total is $1.38.” I wondered where his parents were. Had he driven here himself? He looked too young to drive. I hoped they were waiting outside the store for him.
The boy started putting coins on the counter. I put 4 quarters to the side and he counted the rest up. “I only have a dollar and 35 cents,” he told me. He eyes stared into mine, but he didn’t motion to put the item back or walk away.
I looked at him with sympathy. This was the first time a customer had come up short at my register. “Do you have a phone that you can look up a coupon on?” I asked, not wanting the boy to walk away empty-handed.
He shook his head at me. “No.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” I told him. I called my supervisor over and explained the situation to her. She looked at the kid, pulled a coupon out of my register bag, and scanned it in for him.
The candy bar now rang up $1.04.
I took his 4 quarters and a nickel and gave him a penny back. Instead of being 3 cents short, now he had change. I wished him a nice night and he left the store.
I didn’t think too much about the situation until he walked out. No parents with him (I was still hoping they were outside or the next store down). No cell phone. And one candy bar.
I wondered if he was homeless or a runaway. I wondered if that candy bar was his dinner or his only meal for the day. I wondered where he got the money, but then remembered that my store is situated in a mall plaza and if you look around long enough, you could probably find $1.35 in change in the parking lot. I said a silent prayer for the boy before my next customer came up to my register, but my thoughts stayed on the boy.
I thought about how much excess people buy at my store every day. All these projects for fun, things they don’t need but want. I thought about how they can always pay for their purchases. I thought about how sometimes I’m one of those customers.
Thinking about the boy made me want to get to know him, to try to understand his story. It made me think too late that I probably should’ve asked where his parents were. I wished I had gotten more involved, made sure he had a place to sleep that night, either in his own home or at a local center if he was homeless. Meeting him made me think about the poverty in my own town that I don’t even know about. It made me want to intentionally drop change in parking lots from then on.
Honestly, there’s not much I can do for this boy. There was no sign of him when we closed for the night, which is probably a good sign. Whether or not this boy is homeless, from now on he will always be a symbol to me of those who are homeless or struggling to make ends meet. But I can pray for him that God will watch out for him whatever happens in his life. And I can pray for the homeless and for the people who are struggling with poverty in my home town.
And if you feel so led, so can you.
