09/27/2026
During my school years, I was a recipient of the free lunch program.
And I’m not knocking it.
It put food in my belly.
My family needed the help, and I was grateful for the meal. But there was another part of that program that I don’t think the adults understood.
My lunch card was a different color.
Every kid standing in that lunch line knew what that different-colored card meant.
Josh gets free lunch.
Maybe nobody said anything that day. Maybe sometimes they did. But when you’re a kid, they don’t have to say a damn word.
You know.
You know they’re looking.
You know they know.
And I remember the humiliation of it.
I remember the embarrassment.
I remember feeling ashamed of something a little boy had absolutely no control over.
That’s something I’ve thought about a lot as I’ve gotten older.
Sometimes society tries to do the right thing—and it is the right thing—but we forget to ask what it feels like to be the person receiving the help.
Especially when that person is a child.
Feed the kid.
Absolutely.
But don’t make him wear a sign around his neck telling everybody else that he needed feeding.
Don’t make a child surrender his dignity to get a meal.
I was one of the fortunate ones. I learned something from those moments instead of allowing them to harden me.
I learned what it feels like to have less.
And because I know that feeling, I’ve never found anything funny about somebody else’s struggle.
I’ve never needed to make myself feel taller by pointing out that somebody else had less than me.
Because I’ve held the different-colored card.
I’ve stood in the commodity line.
I’ve eaten the brown beans.
Those experiences could have taught me to be ashamed of where I came from.
Instead, eventually, they taught me something much more important:
Never make another human being feel small because they need a hand.
Help them.
Feed them.
Give them an opportunity.
But whenever you can, leave them their dignity too.
I’ve done a lot of things for people over the years that I don’t talk about.
And there’s a reason.
I didn’t want the credit.
I knew what it felt like to be the kid holding the different-colored lunch card. I knew what it felt like standing outside that church waiting for government commodities, hoping nobody I knew would see me.
So when I finally got into a position where I could help somebody else, the last damn thing I wanted to do was make them feel like that little boy felt.
I didn’t need my name on it.
I didn’t need a picture.
I didn’t need somebody shaking my hand in front of a crowd.
And I sure as hell didn’t need the person I was helping to spend the rest of their life feeling like they owed me something.
If I could help, I helped.
Because I remember.
There’s a difference between helping somebody and making sure everybody knows you helped somebody.
Sometimes the second one ain’t really about the person who needed the help at all.
It’s about you.
I never wanted that.
Maybe that’s one of the gifts poverty gave me.
It taught me that dignity can be worth almost as much as the thing you’re giving.
So if you’re fortunate enough someday to have a little extra—money, food, time, an opportunity, a job, whatever it might be—and you see somebody who needs a hand, give them one.
But don’t make them stand underneath a spotlight to receive it.
Sometimes the best way to give somebody a hand is to make damn sure nobody knows whose hand it was.
