Instant gratification causes good deed to backfire

Seven from my family are here in Mazatlan, Mexico, for Christmas break, and yesterday we were invited by our local friends, Francis and Rudy, to be part of their Christmas Eve celebration. We were to join about 30 adults, mostly employees of the resort next to where we are staying, to deliver toys to children in an impoverished neighborhood and an orphanage. All we needed to bring was lots of candy. Thanks to Sam's, that was no problem.

We gathered at 3 p.m. to load into trucks and cars. Most of my family members stood in the back of the trucks which carried hundreds of toys the resort workers had purchased. My husband, Dave, was in the truck behind the one in which I was comfortably riding in the back seat. I think I overheard "elderly" when they assigned me that seat, but who was I to argue when they mistook me for someone else?

During the hour we caravanned, houses began to disintegrate, sort of like a diseased human body. Stucco was replaced by leaning metal sheets or broken pieces of discarded lumber, tile roofs by canvas or cardboard, and windows were either shattered or, more commonly, nonexistent.

As I turned to see how Dave was faring in his cramped quarters, I watched a woman standing beside him tossing candy to the children walking the streets. We hadn't been instructed to do that, and yet her smile showed she delighted in her generosity. As it turned out, that was a big mistake. We weren't yet into the neighborhood Rudy and Francis had chosen. By the time our vehicles turned onto its dirt road and we tried to park, hundreds of children, mothers carrying newborn babies, and even a few barefoot, shirtless fathers had surrounded us.

From that point on, it was chaotic. Even Santa, an employee from the resort, was pressed against the cab of a car. Jolly Ole Saint Nick was not "Ho-Ho-Hoing" anyone. I handed a young boy, perhaps 4 or 5 years old, a package of matchbox cars. Instead of saying "thank you," he quickly snatched a ball and plastic truck out of my hands. Reminding him of manners, I said "Gracias." He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Maybe it was the way I said it.

I grabbed the toys back.

Rudy and Francis attempted to get order, but their bull-horn wasn't enough to control the crowd. In Spanish, they instructed the children to take only one gift. The adult volunteers tried to get the families into single-file lines. Impossible. They kept coming.

One mother actually brought a huge box and had her young daughter approach the different vehicles with hands out. Sweet little thing -- who could resist her? She ended up with at least ten toys. A frustrated, Spanish-speaking volunteer saw what the mother was doing and told her "no mas" (no more).

Older youth began to climb on the truck, reaching in for whatever they could grab. One elderly mother came to me, holding her crying, young daughter who had gotten nothing. "Blame your neighbors," I wanted to say. But you're not supposed to act ugly on Christmas. So I found a set of plastic trucks and handed it to the little girl. About that time I saw a boy, probably around 12, running through the crowd, showing off the number of gifts he had amassed. Had I been younger, or faster, I would have tackled him.

Happy birthday, Jesus!

Needless to say, we ran out of gifts. We didn't even make it to the orphanage. Dozens of children who had stood back and waited patiently got nothing, and even when the volunteers from the truck tried to toss gifts in their direction, bigger kids or parents intercepted them.

Later that evening, as some of us were discussing what went wrong, I asked Dave who told the woman in his truck to start passing out gifts along the roadway. "No one," I was told. When other volunteers had suggested she should wait for instructions from Rudy and Francis, she had ignored them. "I can't wait," she said. "I like instant gratification."

She got it, all right. Unfortunately, her instant gratification cost a lot of youngsters theirs.