My girlfriend and I had dinner yesterday near where I worked at the videogame store. This brought back quite a few memories, and one was about the day I was almost late for work.
As I said, I was close to the video game store I worked at. I worked there for about nine months and during my 2nd month there I had an incident that almost saw me late for work. Now, at that point in time in my life, I believed that if a person was late, it was an instant firing. I believed this despite the fact that the store manager often was an hour late opening the store with me waiting there, but that's beside the point. Anyway, one day, as I was on I-55 headed to the mall and my 1983 Mazda 626 decided that it wanted to quit working and I lost all power.
This was my first time breaking down and this was back in 2001 and this was back in the day that when cell phones were something that only fancy people had. Thankfully I was chronically early, and I was considering walking to the mall, but I was still four miles away and then what about my car?
I sat there worrying myself to death, when all of a sudden a car pulled up behind me and stopped. "Did they break down too?" I said aloud. It was a nice car (Chrysler Sebring) and then this lady got out and walked up to my car. I rolled down the window and she asked, "Do you need some help?" Did I ever!
She allowed me to use her phone and I called my dad and he asked if my battery was connected, or if it made a this type of noise or that type of noise and to all the questions all I could say was, "I don't know." All the while I was still thinking about the fact that I was going to be late for my shift at the store and that meant life, as I knew it, was about to be over.
In fact, I was a broken record on this. I kept telling my dad that I didn't have time to wait for a tow truck and that I was going to walk. The lady overheard this and said, "Oh, it's on my way, I can take you." That worked out well because I guess all the vehicles of Saint Louis decided to break down because AAA had a three plus hour wait for tows. With that being so my dad told me to take the ride with the lady and we would deal with the car later.
And that's exactly what I did. The lady in the Sebring was very nice and it actually went against everything I believed in people back then because I believed everyone was cold, callous, and downright mean. And yet, she stopped on a busy interstate to see if I needed help and then gave me a ride to my job. How amazing is that?! She gave me her business card and she was an insurance salesperson and day after day I meant to call her to say thank you, but I never did. To this day I wish I would have made that call, and somewhere in a box I know I still have that business card, but I doubt I'll find it. So wherever you are Sebring driver I just wanted to say thanks. It's small acts of kindness like that which make the world a better place and of course you quelled my severe anxiety that day and is a reminder that, should the need arise, if you do a good deed that person may remember you forever.
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