I never said it, but for a long time, the Golden Rule seemed stupid.
While walking through downtown Seattle one mid-2000s-Saturday, my friend gave twenty bucks to a man with a beard and a limp. The limping man said he needed it for a train ticket, and Do unto others, so—“He probably scammed you,” I said later, half a block away.
“We don’t know that.” Calvin shrugged. “He might have really needed it.”
But Calvin looked like he knew. Calvin looked like he wished that twenty dollars had bought a piroshki, or maybe paid for our ferry tickets, or at least went into the donation plate at church.