Sixty cents per glove

This is a post about the Homeless Youth Resource Center at the Utah Pride Center. TINT stands for Tolerant Intelligent Network of Teens, and the group serves youth ages 14-20.

This amazing resource available here in Salt Lake City gives me hope for the future. Lesbian, Gay, Besexual and Transgender youth are much more likely than their heterosexual or non-gender-queer peers to be thrown from their homes, abandoned to the streets. But with places like this, they have a place to go - to be accepted for who they are!

In this cold weather, I think more and more each day of the times when I barely had enough to eat, and how grateful I am that I never had to be cold out on the streets. Salt Lake City can be so harsh in the winter! But not only do I have plenty to eat and a warm place to sleep, this morning I was particularly reminded of how lucky I really am.

I sat down in my car and it had frost on it for the first time this season. It's a brand new Toyota Corolla, so the heat works spectacularly. But of course it takes a few minutes for the heat to get going in the morning. Let me repeat that . . . a few minutes. That's it! And yet I'm shivering, complaining to myself, etc. I start thinking I will stop at Smith's Marketplace after teaching this morning, and pick up a pair of their gloves I've seen near the front doors for $1.19.

Let me repeat that . . . One dollar and nineteen cents. I started thinking just how lucky I really am, with my heater blaring within five minutes of walking out my front door, and a few dollars available to myself to purchase a cheap pair of gloves for cold-steering-wheel blues.

When I got to Smith's this morning, I picked out 11 pairs. One for me, black with cute white string sewn around the sides, and 10 others, of all shades and patterns available. I took the bag to the TINT at the Utah Pride Center, hoping to offer the teens there some colorful comfort this winter.

I would like to encourage you to the the same ~ I think we can all spare sixty cents per hand to warm!