The Kindness of Strangers 3

Something I’ve noticed and am grateful for as I get older is that many people go out of their way to be kind to someone they see as old. For example, people from my father’s American Legion group or his Knights of Columbus organization will go out of their way to drive him to and from their meetings, or make sure he has a ride to their annual dinners, and so on. They look after him in a number of ways, now. People whom he talks to after mass on Sundays have called, worried about him if he didn’t show up at mass, and he does the same for them. People even at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) where he exercises look out for him, especially in the locker room where he has fallen a few times. Someone has always helped him get up and made sure he was okay.

I’ve noticed that some people are starting to be kind like that to me, also. I guess I look like an old lady these days with my gray hair and back stooped from pain. For example, the warning light for low tire pressure came on in my car on my drive home one evening from teaching at a nearby university, recently. I stopped at WaWa to use the free air pressure machine. I have an old pressure gauge stick I’ve used for years to measure the air pressure in my tires, but I couldn’t get it to work right. A young guy was using the other air pump, saw me trying to read the gauge, and offered to help. He told me it’s better to “trust the machine, instead,” meaning the air pressure machine, which actually shows the tires’ air pressure. He showed me how to set it for the number I want, like 35; then it shows when the air pressure in the tire has reached that. I didn’t realize this. He then insisted on testing and filling all of my tires for me and shrugged off my thanks. “No problem!” he said, “Have a good night!” Then he went back to showing his younger brother (who, he said, had just earned his driver’s license) how to fill the tires on his own car.

The next day, though, the light went on again as I drove to the JCC to use the pool and get some exercise. I thought maybe it was just the changes in temperature causing the tires to expand or contract again. When I got out of the car and walked around to look at the tires, I discovered that one of them was flat.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my purse or my cell phone with me because I’m afraid to leave them in a locker or in my car while I’m exercising. I went inside to the front desk and asked to use their phone to call a Suburu dealer. The woman there suggested I check on the side window frame to see if there is a phone number for an emergency assistance service. I went back out to look; one of the young guys who also works the front desk wandered out with me. He looked at the tire and discovered a nail in it. It had probably been there last night, too, but neither I nor the guy who helped the previous night saw it in the dark. The hole, I guess, got bigger as I drove the car.

As we stood there looking at it and talking, another young man (probably no older than his early twenties) walked past, saw what we were looking at, and said, “Hey, I can change that for you.” I explained I didn’t have my wallet and couldn’t pay him. He waved his hand in a “no big deal” kind of gesture and said, “That’s okay. It’s no problem. I can do this pretty quickly.” And he did. It took him about fifteen minutes to take the tire off of the wheel and replace it with the donut tire. It would have taken him less time, but he had to jack it down again to work off the lug nuts, which were tough to loosen, then back up again to get the tire off. The other young man watched and tried to help. He wanted to learn how to change the tire, so the other man patiently explained to both of us what he was doing as he did it.

I thanked him profusely. He warned me: “Don’t drive over 50 MPH with the donut on and get to a tire place as soon as possible. Don’t drive around with it more than you need to.” He waved me on as he stood and talked to the other guy while I drove away.

I drove home, got my purse and phone, made a few calls, found a place nearby that sold tires and could look at mine right away, and drove there, slowly. Fortunately, the mechanic was able to fix the tire, so I didn’t have to replace it. To quote Shakespeare: “All’s well that ends well...” I just wish we all would remember to be this kind to everyone all the time.