It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Today I stood collecting at a kettle stand for the first time this season. First off, here’s the early count this year on a couple of my favorite recurring comments:

“Where’s your Santa suit?” – 3
“You guys are starting early this year.” – 2

I was standing in the Staten Island ferry terminal, Manhattan side. This meant I got to ride the ferry going and coming, which is usually a nice ride and you never know what kind of people you’ll run into. On the way over, I met two Salvationists, Commissioners from the Congo, which was quite random and pretty cool. On the way back, there was a young woman who wanted to take my picture (and this despite no Santa suit, although I was in full uniform with our wheeling kettle stand).

Standing in the ferry terminal is slightly more entertaining than your normal store location. This is primarily due to the commuters coming up from the train periodically breaking into the “Aagghh! The doors to the boat are already open and could close any second!” sprint (note: this is highly amusing, but not very good for business, because there’s no way those people are slowing down to make a donation). Actually, this phenomenon kind of happens in stages. The first wave to come up the escalator after the doors open breaks into a jog, the group behind sees this and starts running, and each group after sees the group in front and runs even faster. By the end you’ve got people who clearly don’t do a lot of running and didn’t exactly dress for it hurtling themselves across the terminal. Eventually the doors close and things calm down until the next boat arrives.

My favorite was a little old man in the first wave of one door-opening who clearly had no intention of running pointing from across the terminal and calling out to no one in particular, “Hold that door! Wait for me!” Luckily he was in no danger of actually missing the boat.

Tonight’s conversations included the normal assortment of supportive believers, thankful veterans, and conspiracy theorists. But the most noteworthy conversation of the evening was with a woman who wanted to know if I had any printed materials. I informed her that I did not, but offered to answer any questions.

“It’s about your cards. It’s just that their kind of crappy….”

(Cards? What cards? Maybe the Manhattan Salv…oh wait, she’s still talking.)

“I mean it’s a nice idea to help out but they break every Catholic rule, and I’m not even Catholic….”

(Um… neither am I. I mean we. We’re… oh wait, there’s more.)

“Are you German?”

No.

“What nationality are you?”

Uh, just American.

“Oh, that explains it. I’m European.”



Glad I could help.