Bookends
I’ve had a couple of experiences in the last month that have alternately made me feel good about the human condition or wonder why people can be such jerks. First the positive experience which essentially involved two strangers going out of their way to help me out. One in particular was pretty inspiring. My car battery managed to die i the parking lot of the Safeway up in Fraser on a recent Sunday night. I had just picked up a carpet steam clearer (the kind that doesn’t work very well, but I still feel compelled to rent every once in a while). I was in the process of walking this up the hill back home when I was passed by a car who turned around to see if I needed help (it was pretty dark out – god only knows what he might have thought I was dragging behind me). This guy drove me (and my steam cleaner) back to the Safeway and jumped my car. He then gave me his card (he’s a retired Delta pilot) and told me to call him in the morning if the car wouldn’t stat again for another jump (all this after I told him that I was planning on leaving at 6:30am to get back to Denver in time for work). Pretty amazing (incidentally, the 2nd stranger in this story was the guy who ended up giving me a jump in the morning when, as I was not very surprised to learn, my battery was still dead). I’m sure many of you saw the movie Pay it Forward and I feel a little sappy saying this, but I’ve actually been looking to try to pay back this man’s kindness by helping someone else out in need. In my book its all karma.
Unfortunately I’ve also had an experience recently that reminded me of the other side of human nature. It’s a long story and not worth going into, but the net of it was that a simple misunderstanding was turned into a big (and much more time consuming and expensive) to-do because rather than picking up the phone and calling, someone assumed the worse and blew the situation up in a way that will ultimately result in a worse outcome for everyone (not to mention taking about 4 months to work out rather than less than a week) I don’t know what it is about some people that makes them act in this way . . pretty pathetic if you ask me.I’m going to re-read the first story here – it much more of how I’d like to think of my fellow humans.