Pennies on the Dollar

I know sometimes I watch too much TV.  Or should I say listen to too much TV.. I seldom just sit and watch it.. There are just to many things to get done to actually sit and watch it.. Well anyway….

I was listening and turning down the volume of the usual blast of loud commercials when I heard one that really bothered me.. “Do you owe over $10.000 to the government in tax debt.. If you do we could settle your tax debt for just pennies on the dollar…”

What.. pennies on the dollar? and they made enough money to have to pay $10,000 dollars in taxes.. And now I hear they won’t even have to pay most of them.. Why the heck not?  I have to pay mine. Everyone I know struggling or not has to pay theirs.  How come some fancy TV advertising lawyer can get some rich person standing in front of a near million dollar home out of paying most of their taxes.. “And we didn’t even have to lose our home”  Well, Yea Rah! for them. I’d be standing there smiling like a cheshire cat too if I just got the tax people to say “okay, hey don’t worry about it..

Every year the little guy like me pays my couple thousand to Uncle Sam.  Struggling to pay them religiously out of our paychecks.  Heaven forbid I am even late in paying the couple hundred that they didn’t get from my pay. For a  $70 mistake my tax prepared did on my taxes one year, they put a lien on my house with threat of selling it at public auction within months of the error. Seventy dollars and they were going to garnish our wages and sell our house and not let us tag our cars.. And these people who owe tens of thousands of dollars are not going to have to pay most of theirs..  What is wrong with this picture?

What makes them so special?  Why do my taxes that I have t pay go up every year and they are giving tax relief forgivemess to enough people that they have a commercial to target them?  Is that fair?

I still think of that little mistake my tax preparer made everytime I see that commercial and it makes me mad all over again. Of course I had a smile on my face when I found out it was a computer glitch that didn’t calculate the taxes correctly for our area at the good old IRS.. It took several months of worrying about losing our house and having to repay what we didn’t owe in the first place to keep them from putting a lein on the house and cars. Then we get a letter with a check saying, oh sorry our mistake here is your check back..  (paraphrasing of course, but you get the gist)

Maybe,  instead of this obvious, generous amount of people who owe the IRS huge amounts of back taxes being forgiven, they had to pay their taxes like the rest of us hard working middle and lower class americans, we wouldn’t have to watch our taxes go up, yet again, next year.

What is wrong with America???.

Please Stand By


Today started out like any other day. Got up, took the dogs out, got ready for work, checked my email, watched the weather, kissed my husband goodbye and headed out the door to make my 8:00 start time. Today ended up a bit different than most.
I drove up the usual road that I take to work and I noticed at a sharp bend in the road there was a stopped garbage truck.. It was a bit odd since there are no garbage pickups in that part of the road.. At first I did not think to much of it and just took care to stay out of the way. As I approached the side of the truck I realized that something terrible had happened.

Just behind the truck laying flat out and face up there was a middle aged man on the pavement. The garbage truck driver was just jumping out of his truck.. It seems the man who rides the back, and throws the garbage into the truck, some how fell off as the truck rounded the bend.

At first I slowed down not sure if I should stop since I really was not of any help in a situation such as this. I don’t even carry my cell phone.. I didn’t want to get in the way, but I felt in the looks of the situation it was not right to just drive on by while he lay in the road with only his friend there beside him..

I stopped the car, I don’t even think I shut it off, and went to see if I could help.. I went and stood over the man on the pavement while his friend who also was not carrying a cell phone went to call for emergency help. I watched close to make sure he was breathing. I felt bad because there was really nothing I could do. He was unconscious. I tried to see if he was awake by talking to him. But there was no response. I just watched helplessly, while reading of basic first aid and cpr ran through my head. All I could think of was not to let anyone move him cause he could have broke his back or neck falling that hard onto the pavement..

As I watched a small pool of blood had formed from the back of his head.. Whether it had been there the whole time, I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to get any bigger.. If it had, I knew I had a clean beach towel in my car I could have used to try and put under his head to help stop the bleeding.. But again should I even move him that much. The things that run through your head when something like that it happening..

At first the driver ran to the ranger station right across from where we were, but they were not open yet so no one was there. I guess he had a radio in his truck as he ran back to the truck and within just a minute there were cars with sirens and police and other public works trucks coming from all directions. Though the man was breathing it was slow.. and he did have a strong pulse. One of the men that showed up from the ranger station garage thought he had stopped breathing and checked to make sure his airway was not blocked.. He gave him a couple breaths to make sure he was breathing seemed to get a bit better. This man also checked his pulse and agreed that his pulse was strong..

The blood pool from his head did not seem to get any larger in the few minutes I was there. Public works men who were his friends arrived and the police and volunteer guys, probably fire department guys, arrived and seemed to have everything under control..

I started to feel as though I had no business there anymore and that I might appear to the arriving emergency crew as a gawking spectator. So I got in my car and went to work. I wasn’t much help but I had done all I could do and needed to give them the space they needed to work.

I was concerned for the man but felt okay with everything till I got to work..

I sat down at my computer arriving just on time. I started trying to open up my same programs I have opened on my computer the last three years of my life. Only thing was, I couldn’t focus enough to even click on the links I needed to. I was having a major delay reaction.. My heart started pounding and I could not focus my mind. Suddenly I nearly started crying. There was no way I was able to deal with the public at that moment. I kept seeing his pale face and the pool of blood in my mind. Knowing I may never know if he was going to be okay. I didn’t even know his name.

I am one of those people that are good in a crisis but fall apart when it is over with. I started shaking and told a couple co-workers what had happened.. I went to try and find a supervisor to tell them it was going to be a few minutes till I could collect myself enough to answer the phones. But of course there was none to be found.

I sat for a few minutes to comprehend what had just happened. Trying to relax and to tell myself I had done all I could. I wished I could just go home.. I was, for a time, thinking about the mortality of things and how in a flash everything in a person’s life can change.. How within the few seconds it took for the driver of that truck to look back in his mirror and stop the truck, within only a few short feet, his life had changed. The man, his co-worker, his friend, lay on the ground, possibly dying. He had only a few moments before been doing his regular route throwing cans of trash into the back of the truck with possibly no cares in the world and with a twist of fate it had all changed.

As I collected myself and felt myself calm down enough that I was able to start up the programs on my computer, I knew I could take a bit more time if I needed it. I felt that the faster I got back to my job the faster I could just go back to focusing and put aside the events just past. The world doesn’t stop for tragedy.

I didn’t have trouble most of the day.. I didn’t try to sell things like I was supposed to I focused on just the necessities of fixing the customers problems to the best of my ability.. But every time I stopped either for break or lunch my thoughts were filled with concern for what was happening to the man. Did I do the right thing? Could I have done more? Should I have done nothing?

After work I went out for my usual Friday night-out dinner. I didn’t taste my food.. I don’t remember eating half of it.. Even now I feel a strange sort of numb feeling. Should I call the hospital and see if I can find out any information? What would I tell them? I didn’t have a name. I’m not related. Again, helpless to the feelings.

So instead, like any writer I put the thoughts down on paper (computer screen) to help work through them. I have to resign myself to the thoughts that for the few minutes I was there. And his friend didn’t have to leave him lying there alone behind a garbage truck as he went to find help. And even in that little way, I think I did the right thing… just standing by.

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