In Malaysia at the outdoor market, it's dinner time, there are different people, all with different lives. The little 10 year old me who grew up in a small town in the midwest has never seen as many. I look down at my food and a man comes up to me, he looks homeless and has no legs, he's trying to sell something. In his native language, he asks me a question. Why is he talking to me? Why not anyone else? 

“Don't answer him,” my dad says, as my mom shoos him away. It's the tourist market. The only one where they spoke English, we had to speak in low voices and my mom was the only one to talk to the workers. 

The homeless people that we don't know what happened to them, or what their story was, they made money selling useful to the visitors many would forget. I was scared of that man at first and didn't know what was happening. As I finished my meal I looked around, there was the man with no legs, a man on a cane, and a worker. They were staring at each other. I don't think they liked each other. They never said a word.

 I don't think the homeless man remembers me. Not one bit. But I remember him, the way I couldn't help him. The way I couldn't talk to him. The way I always think back to that day never knowing what happened to the man's legs, or what happened to him after I left. I've never seen someone in such bad shape he was ruffled up and looked exhausted. I knew my mother’s home country was a third-world country but never knew how bad it was. 

A couple of years later on a hot summer day, my mom asked me to help her, there was a festival happening, boats racing up the pond, the rowers in the boat following a drum that beat. This celebration is the dragon boat festival, a Chinese tradition passed down from past generations. It falls on the fifth day of the fifth month on the lunar calendar each year. My mom along with others wanted to bring this tradition to the states. I always loved watching the boats race, the beating of the drums as the boats passed by, but never cared to ask what the festival was raising money for. 

“Ronald McDonald House,” My mom says, I looked up at her, not knowing what the conversation was about. 

“What's that?” I asked. She explained that it's the organization where all the money is going. That's the place where families go when they don't have enough money to pay for housing and medical bills. 

I thought back to that one day in Malaysia, that man, what if he had someplace, some home to go to? Did he have kids or a family that depended on him? Would he have been able to save his legs if he had this place? 

I wanted to help him but couldn't. I decided that day that even helping set up and organize the festival was a good way to help people from getting to that point. To help people who were at that point, nothing mattered more to me. I was determined to do everything I could to help people. The festival gave me a way to help the families that needed a home and place to go to. They remind me of that man, the one from so many years ago. How I couldn’t help him, but I can help people now.