‘I’M Hungry’

Hunger is something about which I know little. Once or twice in my life I have missed a meal, but those were always mistakes of timing that justified an extra entree or dessert later the same day. Hunger was something I viewed from a distance, a concept without meaning in my daily life. Hunger was images of emaciated children in Africa and Asia. I felt remorse over their plight and the urgent need to move on to an issue whose outcome I could influence.

Last summer, a few blocks from my home in Spokane, I saw hunger in a way that I could finally understand, and it happened in a fast food restaurant in the wealthiest part of Spokane.

That summer evening I met two little girls who had to fend for themselves. I don’t know their real names so I’ll call them Annie and Amy. We met because my wife had a commitment and I offered to make dinner for the kids in a typically fatherly fashion: I took them out for their favorite meal in a fairly new restaurant whose prime attraction is a large indoor play area.

I didn’t notice Annie and Amy at first. I was too busy sorting the cheeseburger from the chicken nuggets and making sure plastic straws made their way into cartons of cold milk. After a few nibbles on hot, greasy french fries, my three children ran to the play area, disappearing into a maze of tunnels, slides and rope ladders.

Annie was probably about 3 or 4 years old, though she seemed small for her age. Her well-worn summer play clothes looked a bit snug and in need of laundering. Her hair was short and brown, her skin pale white. Amy was older, perhaps 8 or 9, a foot taller than her sister and she had brown hair. Her clothes were tight, but clean for a busy child at the end of a hot summer afternoon.

Annie sat at the table next to ours while Amy made frequent trips out of the play area into the main dining room.

“I’m hungry,” I heard Annie say to the people at another table.

It seemed innocent enough, the kind of comment children make when they see others dining, much to the embarrassment of their parents. I didn’t think much about it until Amy returned from the dining room with a clear plastic cup filled with a cola drink. That struck me as odd. Those cups were usually reserved for serving water. “Perhaps,” I thought, “she’s helping herself to a free soft drink.”

The facade crumbled when Annie told her sister about the french fries another family had given her.

“Make sure you say thank you,” the older sister suggested sternly as she slipped into her mouth two small fries from the pile on the table.

Suddenly I realized that these weren’t two girls with nothing better to do. It looked as though Amy had taken her younger sister to this restaurant because she knew they could find food there.

I told myself I was being overly dramatic. But the trips to the dining room continued and the smiling chant “I’m hungry,” continued as Annie walked to other tables asking for food. Were these girls really hungry? Should I ignore them? Why did I feel so bad when this situation clearly wasn’t my problem?

The gift of turning 40 this year has been a newfound willingness to push beyond limits of habit and the need to mind my own business. When Amy passed by our table on another trip to the main dining room, I finally asked, “Honey, are you hungry too?”

Amy brought her dusty bare feet to a stop on the smooth tile floor, shoulders drooping, chin lowered and mumbled quietly, “I haven’t eaten all day.”

I waved for her to return to the table where Annie sat swirling a tiny french fry in a nearly dry pool of ketchup that had been squirted onto a white paper napkin. As she sat at the table I gathered up the still warm cheeseburger, chicken nuggets and milk my children had barely touched and placed them before Annie and Amy. With her head lowered over the food now before her, Amy kept her eyes focused on the table and softly whispered, “thank you.”

I wanted to be angry. Angry at parents who allowed this to happen. But I am enough of a parent to know that moms and dads are human, too, and placing blame would not fill the tummies of these two little girls.

“Let’s go,” I announced to my children. “Time to go home.” They didn’t notice that the table had been cleared or that their food had been given away. They knew there was more where that came from. But one of them immediately figured out that something wasn’t right.

“What’s wrong, daddy?” my 6-year-old daughter asked.

“Those two girls,” I told her, “didn’t have enough to eat.”

My daughter suggested that we just go and buy more food. I tried to explain that it wasn’t that easy. But while we talked, all I could think was that unless somebody did something, the same thing could happen to those two girls again tomorrow. I thought about giving them money; I thought about taking them home and talking to their mother or father or baby sitter. I couldn’t decide.

Wrestling with the desire to help and cultural imprinting that says, “don’t get involved,” I called the police.

I explained to a busy sounding dispatcher that what I had to report may not be a crime in the strictest sense of the word, but that I was very worried about two little girls who weren’t getting enough to eat.

“We’ll send somebody to check on them,” the operator replied as the preoccupation in his voice dissipated. “It’s called a check on the welfare call, sir,” he told me. After I gave him the address of the restaurant and a description of the two girls, he thanked me for calling.

I don’t know if the police found Annie and Amy. I don’t know how much they could offer if they did. I don’t know where or how or if they got a meal the next day. But Annie and Amy gave me a sad and painful gift that summer day. They put human faces, the faces of children, on the word hunger.

Perhaps the Annies and Amys of the world suffer because of the foolishness of those of us who feel unless we can solve the whole problem there is nothing we can do. We’re the same people who, when confronted with uncomfortable situations that appear to be beyond our control, resort to labels that relieve us of blame.

Maybe the Annies and Amys of the world will suffer less when people of good intention learn to accept the uncertainty that comes with touching other people’s lives. And the assurance that it just might make all the difference.