Thread by @ricklewisco

I gave $500 to a stranger on the street once as an experiment.

I never found out the man's name.

But I did find out exactly what he did with the money.

🧵

I had been street performing for many years and had learned how to make substantial cash from a single comedy circus show at the public market in my town.

$500 or more in donations was not an uncommon amount to earn.

A woman in one of my audiences approached me at the end of a show one day, told me that her hot-water heater had just burst in her basement, and joked about how much she could use the money I'd just collected in my hat.

We both laughed.

But I didn't give her the money.

It did get me thinking, however.

What if I did give away all the money in my hat after a show to an audience member?

And how would I pick that person?

So after the next street performance later that day—this is what I did.

I performed an extra long show, gathering the largest crowd and the most money that I could.

After they had donated, and before the crowd started to depart, I announced I was going to give away everything in my hat.

Everyone stopped, wondering if I was serious.

"All you have to do," I said, "is come up on stage and tell everybody what you would do with the money. Then we'll vote on who deserves it."

"Who's interested?"

Of 400 people, about 100 hands went up.

I randomly picked 20 people and brought them up to the front, lining them up shoulder to shoulder on stage, and handed my microphone to the 1st person.

It happened to be a little kid.

He shouted into the mic that he would he would use it to buy candy.

Everybody laughed.

As a comedian I was thinking how brilliant I was.

I had just found a new way to get the audience involved and imagined how funny this would be to watch people publicly admit their cravings and fantasies about the ways they'd blow 100s of dollars in cash.

But that didn't happen.

-Instead, the second person in line described his commitment to United Way.
-The next woman had started a community garden she wanted to expand.
-After that, came a pitch from a principal to buy books for his school.
-And then a plea for support of an animal shelter.

And like this it went, down the line, each person speaking more passionately about their worthy cause or vision.

Instead of this getting more & more funny, the crowd grew more & more hushed.

We were in a public market, surrounded by cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians, dogs, and food stalls.

But the sincerity and integrity of the speakers created a dome of sanctuary that muted the chaos and made us immune to the usual distractions.

We were transfixed.

It was like a reverse car-accident, where we all gathered around, fascinated to stare at a near-life experience by the side of the road.

Until it came to the last man standing.

He was at the end of the line, and when the microphone was handed to him, he took it in a trembling hand.

Wearing a pair of blue, oil-stained overalls, his knees were shaking so hard, literally knocking together, that it was like looking at a cartoon instead of a person.

In the meekest voice, he managed to start telling us of his son-in-law who had a back injury that was preventing him from working.

His son-in-law, daughter and grand-daughter, were in danger of being evicted, unless the son-in-law could get back to work.

He trembled. He shook. He asked for help.

500 more dollars for an operation would change the course of their lives.

Clearly terrified to make this request in front of a crowd, the man's cause wasn't more noble, or worthy, or compelling than all the others.

But his courage was.

It was no surprise that the audience gathered there on a public street didn't vote to give the little kid money for candy, or to fund any of the other remarkable missions that had been described.

They voted, instead, to reward the person who had to transform himself, in front of their eyes, on the way to serving his cause.

They voted for the person who had to overcome himself.

For the person who had to become someone new to champion something he cherished.

I handed him the money, and he took it immediately home.

I never got his name.

But I didn't need to.

He was all of us when we're at our best.