Saturday, March 3, 2007

Kindness of Strangers

Last night I had a carbo load dinner with my pace group. We went to an Italian place, very noisy, the waiters sang, not at the table but in the middle of the room with a mike and a piano and drums. It was a lot of fun. It's sort of a myth that you can carbo load, by the way. You can't tell the body "Please store up extra energy so I can use it in a couple of days." The body simply uses what it can use and gets rid of the rest.

After dinner I walked up to where I had parked my car and discovered that the front right tire had gone flat. Earlier in the day as I'd been driving the route the check engine light had come on so I figure the universe, or my car, is telling me something. Perhaps it's a vote of confidence in my running abilities, because I'm feeling fine while the car is falling apart.
I called triple A on my cell phone and waited for the tow truck.

When the tow truck driver came he turned out to be a nice guy, efficient. He did his job. Wasted no time. Asked me a minimum of questions. Then he gave me the standard advice about spare tires: don't drive too fast, stay off the freeway, and that was that.

I was so grateful to the guy. I realize he was just doing his job. Triple A paid him to be there. And doing the job well and being nice to the customer is something I'm sure triple A checks up on.

But it just struck me how good people can be together when we try. I had a common problem in our car-based culture, and our culture came up with an efficient solution to getting stranded drivers back on the road. I'm a nice person who needed a little help. He's a nice guy able to offer some help. How well our world works when we each do our part and face problems as part of a team.

Maybe that's what the universe was trying to tell me.

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