Let's eat Grandpa!

I was listening to an interview with memoirist Liz Murray on NPR this morning, and, like many NPR stories, it started a train of thought that now seems to be on a runaway track.

Liz Murray recently wrote a (highly acclaimed) memoir, Breaking Night, and in this interview she talked about growing up in the Bronx with two parents who were drug addicts. She and her sister lived on what little was left over after her parents’ drug binges until she left home at 15, and decided to try and make some sense of her life, and, in particular, her education. And through hard work and the kindness of strangers, she was awarded a New York Times scholarship to Harvard, where she later graduated. Tonight, NPR.com will have the podcast if you’d like to listen. I can’t wait to read the book.

Murray’s story is amazing, but one thing that struck me in the interview was Murray’s story about a woman who stopped her on the street while she was at Harvard. This woman said, “I heard about your story, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do because I don’t have a lot of money. But then, as I was doing my daughter’s laundry this morning, I realized Liz must have laundry. So…do you have laundry?” And the woman did Murray’s laundry for the semester.

And that got me thinking about something I read yesterday by Donald Miller. (I hope my review and subsequent mentions of Donald Miller’s frakkin-amazing book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years have convinced you that you MUST READ IT.) On his blog, Miller asked what you would do if you were given $20 that you weren’t allowed to spend on yourself, and to use that $20 to create a great story. Miller calls this an “inciting incident” — something that causes you to start living your life in a different way. To give your life some plot.

And it struck me that this woman did that for Murray. For the cost of some laundry detergent and a little bit of her time, she was able to contribute both to her own story and to the story that Murray was living and would later publish as an inspiration to many, including myself. Her small investment made great returns.

I’ve had many thoughts — sending textbooks overseas for African kids, giving it to IJM to help rescue kids from trafficking, donating to my friends who are adopting a baby from Ethiopia, taking one of my former youth group kids out to dinner to catch up, funding another Kiva loan…there are so many options. I’ll keep you all posted on where my money goes and how it affects my own plot.

In the meantime,  what would you do with $20? What story would you create? In fact, if you’d like $20, there’s a guy giving money away for this very purpose. He might have some funds left!