An Act of Kindness Pays Richly

I had spent the night before tossing and turning, angry at my fate: a director of low-budget movies, constrained not so much by the movie business as my own lack of talent and initiative.

Now I was standing on a grassy strip where Ocean Park Boulevard meets the Pacific in Santa Monica with a friend and our two 8-year-old sons. We had just finished a glorious morning of surfing and were surrounded by beach gear. I heard a garbled voice and looked over to see a man with a twisted face in a wheelchair. He was talking to me but I couldn’t understand a word he said. Obviously he had some kind of physical problem. He repeated himself and I started to adjust to his speech pattern. “Excuse me,” he was saying, “Can you help me?”

Does it ever end? I thought to myself. Can you live in Santa Monica and not be approached for just one day? I was put off by his slurred speech and facial contortions. Immediately he picked up on my discomfort. “I don’t bite,” he said. It was a good rejoinder to my prejudice. “What do you need?” I asked, ready to dig into my wallet.

“Could you help me go to the bathroom?” he asked.

Suddenly I wanted to be fixing the Mir space station. The men’s public restroom at the beach is one of the most unpleasant I’ve ever been in--including holes in the ground in 25-cent-a-night Middle Eastern hotels.

I clutched at the chance my ears had deceived me. “What do you need?” I repeated. But he was very firm and not in the least shy. “Could you help me go to the bathroom?”

OK, I replied, ashamed to reply otherwise. I figured he just needed some help getting in the door.

We headed in that direction and chatted. His name was Neal and he has cerebral palsy. Then we got to the door and I offered to help him maneuver through. But he was quite dismissive. That wasn’t the help he needed. He insisted that I go in first.

With a sinking feeling, I went in. It was obvious I was nervous but Neal took over the situation like a good director, giving clear and concise instructions that began with: “Unzip my fly.”

Well here we are in a public bathroom and I’m unzipping a man’s fly, I thought. The process was intimate and involved my holding a plastic cup. “It’ll take a couple of minutes,” he informed me. So, while I held the cup, we talked. Neal told me about his 6-year-old, pit bull, Ernie. “Gee, I love that dog.” He also has two kittens that he just adopted.

He lives in the Valley. His attendant had driven him to the beach and left him there for a couple of hours. “I’m very independent,” Neal said proudly. He was curious about my work. I explained about making films and he told me he hadn’t seen a movie in 20 years. “Too expensive. But I watch a lot of television.” “Well, you can see my movies there,” I replied. “If they make the theaters, they don’t usually stay there long.” And suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about it.

After a couple of minutes, I washed the cup and put it back in the bag behind his chair. I offered to help push Neal out of the bathroom but he didn’t want any help that he didn’t need. We got out into the brilliant sunshine as buff dudes and pretty girls skated past. We said goodbye and I watched the wheelchair disappear into the crowd.

“That was very nice of you to do that,” one of the boys told me. I brushed it off. “What was I going to do? Say no?” But in my mind, I was thinking it was very nice of Neal to let me help him.