Fakery

The news this morning is very different than the news last night.

A little more than 12 hours ago, all we heard about was a 6 year-old boy who may, or may not, have become trapped in a homemade weather balloon that was drifting through the skies of Colorado.

This morning, there is much speculation that the whole thing may have been a stunt designed to land the boy and his family a reality show.

Yesterday, there was concern that the boy might, at any moment, plummet to the ground at the end of a long silver streamer.

This morning, there is debate around who should be held accountable and pay for the cost of scrambling the Air Force.

Compassion is a precious commodity and becoming more so in our increasingly cynical age. It's a natural resource in humans and, like other natural resources, it is finite in supply. The body can make more blood, but compassion once invested can never be replaced.

Since yesterday's incident, it has come to light that balloon boy's family had been on "Wife Swap" a reality show where two very different families trade their matriarchs for the benefit of the TV audience.

Armed with this piece of information, radio talk show hosts are this morning parsing a comment made by the boy in an on-camera interview last night. He is alleged to have said that he "did it for the show."

Whether it was for the TV show that they supposedly want, or for the "show" of all the first responders, including the United States Air Force, trying to safely resolve a potentially high-risk situation has not been made clear and will doubtless keep many a radio host's phone lines lit for the rest of the day.

But now that that conversation is out there, now that the public's reflexive compassion has been challenged, deflated by the prospect of some ulterior motive, it will only serve to make it that much harder to feel compassionate the next child at risk.

Asking people for support--whether emotional, or even financial--is a trust-based transaction. People call us looking for help every day, but they can only do that once they have accepted that we will not take advantage of their vulnerability. Even in today's warts-and-all culture, it takes a lot for people to disclose that they are experiencing a mental illness, or have a family member who is.

Usually, when they call us it's because they want to speak to Paddy. After 28 years she has a proven track record of being a compassionate and discrete advocate. When Paddy is out of the office, or otherwise unavailable, it is often harder, or even impossible, for them to work with any of our other staff. The callers don't know us and are not yet sure that they can trust us. We have to earn that trust.

Doing this work takes money and a good portion of the money that comes to us as personal donations is in recognition of Paddy's service to the donor, or the donor's family. If, for any reason, those donors questioned her discretion, that money would evaporate.

And it's not just stigma issues relating to mental health that can compromise our compassion. People donate money based on emotion and when those feelings are called into question, then barriers are go up. 17 years ago, the president of the national United Way resigned over a misuse of funds scandal that still influences donors. Locally, we hear almost annually about how there are donors who won't support the Red Cross because they charged for donuts during World War II.

Once stories like that get out there, they impact donations to all organizations. Donors who, for whatever reason, have invested their compassion in a cause, or a news story, or even another person and later learn that that decision was unwise, or worse, foolish, think twice about making their next investment.

Nobody likes to get played.

I have a family member who has, on more than one occasion, disclosed that he has attempted suicide.

His disclosures were, by definition, always in the past tense and generally took the form of "You know, last winter, I went into the woods to kill myself." (I didn't know that he had been planning any of these attempts and was grateful that, for whatever reason, he had not been successful.)

I have neither the credentials nor the skill to attempt to analyze his motives, but earlier this fall, he called me and I noted that his tense had shifted from the past to the future. He was talking about "getting out of town" and how he "couldn't take it anymore." He engaged in what is described as "settling of accounts," saying good-bye in one form or another.

I spoke with his mother and she was concerned that she could not get in touch with him and that he had been talking about suicide.

I called his cell phone and got his voice mail. I don't remember what I said exactly, but my intent was to get him to come back from "the woods."

A little while later he called me and in the course of our conversation indicated that he had taken something--he kept asking if his speech was clear. He said several times that he could not take the "ostracization" from the rest of the family. He felt isolated and alone. He also indicated his approximate location by saying that he couldn't talk anymore because he was losing cell service.

I called the police. I believed that he had taken an overdose and was on the verge of passing out.

After a lengthy interview with the police, they took his cell phone number and called it in an effort to determine his location.

Sometime later, my family member called me and said "if that's you're game, I'm one step ahead of you."

He had talked to the police and assured them that he was not near death and nowhere near where he indicated to me that he was.

I cannot condense my relationship with my family member with any skill and ably convey its complexity and accumulated failures over the course of 5 decades. I know I did not always behave as I should have, nor did I respond to every request for help. I do however feel that I had always demonstrated my compassion and this incident was the last straw.

He tried to call back several times later that day, but I would not take his calls. I have nothing left to give to him. What I had had, he took advantage of.

Trading on the compassion of others has real consequences both for those involved in the transaction as well as others. I will not be so fast to respond to his threat of suicide, or other cry for help. He has proven himself to be one who does it "for the show."

There are many sad aspects to his story, but using the currency of suicide to get attention diminishes the impact of authentic attempts. It's like crying wolf, or telling the authorities that your child is trapped in a silver weather balloon.

Nobody likes to get played.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director