211–220 of 353 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just be wary as you get older. The number of old men who die from heart attacks while shoveling snow is nonzero
The number of old men who die from doing no exercize is also quite high.
You don't have to be unfit to get done in by shoveling snow.
One of those happened in a heavy rainstorm. The ground was soft, and I don't know why exactly, but I couldn't get the jack to lift the jeep high enough to lift the tire.
I was on a country highway near my home, with no cell service and maybe one car every ten minutes. I tried a few spots, even just halfway in the lane--I was afraid, though, because the rain limited visibility for other drivers.
A man pulled up behind me in a Subaru. He wasn't local; he had come from Tennessee to paint a local scenic spot. He not only lent me his jack, but he got out in the pouring rain and helped until it was done. We both had raincoats, at least.
He said that just the day before, he had a flat of his own, and someone stopped and helped him solve some problem he couldn't get around, too.
I doubt that's the nicest thing a stranger ever did for me, but I sure appreciated it. Stopping and helping may be a small kindness, but it can feel like a miracle to the recipient.
I saw my mom do something as a child that really stuck with me. This was back in the 70s cause I’m old. It was summer in the Midwest we were in the car in a store parking lot gettin ready to leave. An African-American lady pulled into a spot beside our car. In front of her was a pickup truck with two men and a pregnant woman. They started accosting the lady telling her she had bumped their vehicle and now the pregnan…
I live in Minnesota and do not own a snowblower. Probably my mistake, but I always joke that I get most of my exercise in the winter. Snow is really heavy for those without context. A couple years ago we had a particularly bad snowfall. The plow has a nasty hate filled habit of dumping all its snow in my driveway. I had a drift at the end of my driveway about 4 feet high and 6 feet deep. Literally up to my chest. I h…
I should add that this was back in the days of dumb phones, long before GPS devices were common in cars, so all I had was a small-scale paper route map of France. I had no clue which way to go to find help, and no way to find a phone number. It was late afternoon, and we were still a long way from the campsite. I was starting to sweat.
But then a French woman with her daughter pulled over in a small car and asked if we needed any help. Using a mixture of my poor French and sign language, I indicated I needed a wheel wrench, which she pulled out of her boot. My joy and relief were obvious. I change the van wheel in no time, thanked her profusely, and off she went.
But there was twist in the tale: my hazard lights had been flashing so long that when I tried to start up the car, all I got was that sickening tick-tick-tick sound of a dead battery. Could my day get any worse? But then I remembered that my van had its own battery! A quick battery swap-over later, and we were back on the road, and had a great holiday, all thanks to the kindness of a big-hearted French woman who was kind enough to stop and offer help to foreign strangers stuck in the middle of nowhere.
A Turkish lady got out of her car, went to the boot and got three heavy duty plastic bags out. She helped pick up the groceries, pack it into the bags, all the while ignoring traffic and halting cars. I said my most profuse thank you in German and all she said was: no problem. I still remember it often.
My team and me had just won 2nd place with a prestigious competition and decided to spend a chunk of the prize money right then and there: Wanted to get myself a nice backpack (Victorinox) but as I was a student at the time and the prize money would come much later, I came a significant amount of money short... This person just handed me, in cash, a hundred dollars. The backpack is now over 10 years old, and I still use that backpack daily with lots of pleasure, and only has minor scuff/wear and tear marks. It's been a fond memory to revisit, also because the memory is attached to my first time visiting Seattle (and Microsoft HQ). If the person that handed me that cash all those years ago reads this: Thank you so much, I would love to share what I've been up to.
I've got a weird one from a bank. I was driving from South Carolina to Virginia, I was completely broke, and had exactly $20 in cash, and only a couple dollars in my checking account. I did my math wrong, and didn't have enough money for enough gas to make it home. I was trying to draft behind semi trucks and drive slow to conserve fuel, but it wasn't enough. I called my bank at the gas station with my needle on empt…