Desperate Housewives

By Rick McNary

 

I must confess I have never watched a single episode, or even five minutes, of the t.v. show “Desperate Housewives.”  I lived with an “Exasperated Housewife” for the first eighteen years of my life- my Mom- but I don’t think we would have called her desperate.  Irritated? Sure.  Grouchy?  Some of the time – but we had it coming.  Frustrated? If I had picked up after myself more, maybe not.

 

So if you were to try to converse with me about the show, Desperate Housewives, my eyes would glaze over like an eighth grade kid in biology class right after lunch. I might act like I was paying attention, but I would not have the foggiest notion of what you were talking about. 

 

Therefore, you can imagine my rather passive response and the blank look on my face  when Chessney Barrick, the young and highly energetic Development Director for Stop Hunger Now (SHN), told me that Jesse Metcalfe, the hot young actor that plays the gardener on the show, was going to be at the SHN Million Meal Packaging Event in Raleigh, North Carolina. I looked at her with all the enthusiasm I could muster and said, “Who?”  The roll of her eyes let me know I was not from the same planet on which she lives.

 

I had traveled to Raleigh to be a part of SHN’s Million Meal Packaging Event on the campuses of N.C. State, U.N.C., and Eastern University. As I had researched our efforts to save the starving, I had come across Dr. Ray Buchanan at Stop Hunger Now and he had invited me to one of their packaging events. Since then, I have discovered a collegiality in the realm of fighting hunger that I certainly have never witnessed in the business world. Ray  not only invited me to one of their events, he has opened the doors of SHN and shared many of their resources to help us fight world hunger.  He’s so excited about what we are doing that he promises to be at our first event!

 

As I was walking through the gym where the students were packaging, I was invited to take over the spot where Jesse had been packaging with four college girls.  Poor things.   There they were, packaging with a hot young stud and swooning over him only to be replaced by a pudgy, balding man old enough to be their daddy.  I kind of felt sorry for them. But I felt more sorry for myself.  Growing old is the pits.

 

I tried to chat with them, but they were still a little preoccupied with the latex gloves that Jesse had personally helped them put on their dainty little hands.  I felt like a goofy, buck-toothed freshman that had just walked up to the cheerleader squad crooning over the quarterback.  

 

I’m a very comfortable conversationalist and can usually get about anyone to chat with me, but this was hard work. Perhaps in order to either amuse me or shut me up, they finally started responding to my attempts at conversation in monosyllabic responses.  Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. But I’m used to that – I’ve raised teenagers.   

 

I asked them why they had chosen to spend their afternoon packaging food for starving people. One of them responded, “I didn’t have anything better to do.”  Jesse had left the building and apparently there were no Desperate Housewives reruns on that afternoon.

 

But I liked the response of the girl standing beside her as she replied, “Yah, but  you know, there’s nothing better you could be doing.”

 

Bingo!

 

My first trip outside of the comfort of the United States was to the hot and dirty village of Somotillo, Nicaragua. It was 120 degrees in the shade as I stood on the dusty, dung covered street in the barrio. I was burnt to a crisp by the equatorial sun and sweating profusely having just left a Kansas winter a hemisphere away.   A little five year old girl with filthy, matted hair and a dirty dress on backwards started patting my pocket looking for money.  Then she asked me for my watch. Then my shoes. Then my hat. Finally, she asked me to hold her.

 

As I picked her up, she threw her arms around my neck and squeezed her lice-infested hair against my face.  I recoiled, I ashamedly admit, in repulsiveness at the smell and the filth.  But then she whispered in my ear and asked me for food.

 

And as they say here in Kansas:  “I ain’t been right since.”

 

From behind a cardboard shack with a makeshift roof of black plastic, her Momma came wearily wandering out to check on her little girl.  Soon, a gaggle of children gathered around us.  Thirteen people lived in a room the size of a garage.  No one knew where any of the dads were. Same mom. Different dads. Hungry kids.

 

Now that’s a Desperate Housewife.

 

That was one of those moments that change a life.  It changed mine.  I purposed from that moment on to do what I could to help the real Desperate Housewives of this world have something to feed their babies.

 

That’s why we started Numana.  Check our vision out at:  www.numaninc.com

 

Numana exists “To empower people to save the starving.”

 

Wanna help? I know a few Desperate Housewives that would really appreciate your help.