When I was in high school. I wore a leather jacket and engineer boots. Pretty normal for a pacific north west high school student. I drove a 65 mustang and knew how to use it. One night I came across a sedan sticking into a ditch. I watched a dozen cars drive by. I saw a young frazzled women standing looking bedraggled. This is long before cell phones.
I stopped. Put my hands out in front of me. She was obviously freaked out. She was giving off the same vibe as a hamster that made it out of the Habitrail and found the cat waiting. It was dark. It was raining and she was soaked. As I approached I could hear two kids in the back seat crying. I asked her how I could help. She hemmed and hawed about the car being stuck. Nobody was hurt. I said I could go for help. She cried. I said we’d put some flares down. Which I did from my mustang (anybody carry those anymore?)
Given a moment she calmed a bit and maybe 10 years older than me (ancient!) she talked about not knowing what to do. I said again I could go for help but … lets be honest who was going to listen to me. I wasn’t exactly the paragon of CW character perfection. So … I handed her the keys to my mustang and said go for help. Her eyes got wide and then all I saw was taillights.
When I tell this story, my male friends are always like, “You had evidence she couldn’t drive she was in a ditch.” My female friends are like, “… she left you alone with her children?”
They all want to know, “Did she come back?”
About 15 minutes later. Standing at the back of her car watching not one single person stop. Cold rain soaked me through to the skin. DOZENS of troopers and sheriffs deputies descended on me. Just how a senior in high school wants to spend his evening. I stood soaked, in heavy rain, surrounded by cops, half of them had firearms in their hands, it was dark, there were crying kids in the car, and the car wasn’t mine.
No chance of any misunderstanding here. Not a chance. My heart beating like war drum in my chest might not have believed me on that one.
Arms held akimbo palms up like some kind of pallid grunge Jesus. I was surrounded by enough armament to take down half the gun fighters of the old west. The flashing blue lights in the rain were a pretty strobe effect. The scowls of the po-po were not so pretty.
One of the cops walked forward and asked me for identification. About then my mustang returned with the young lady in it. There was me quaking in my rain filled boots under the baleful glare of enough law enforcement to ruin my century. The lady now warmed up ran up and grabbed the very dastardly po-po by the elbow and referred to me as her savior. He smiled, said he knew, and just wanted my contact details. He offered me cash for gas. He offered his business card. It turns out that the lady I had helped was his young wife. The crying children were his children. I took nothing, collected my keys, just mumbled something forgettable, and moved along.
You do stuff because it’s right not for reward. You give because it is right. Not because it’s fire insurance.
When I got out of the Marines I applied to be a cop. It was kind of expected. When I walked in for my interview there was the same deputy years later now a sergeant. He handed me a cup of coffee and said, “I already know you’re a great guy how would you like the job?” I told him I never expected anything out of helping anybody and he said, “When you don’t seek fortune to help others. Fortune finds you so you can help others.”
It took me years to find out how he linked the former Marine standing in front of him to the skinny leather jacket wearing brat of many years previous. But, that is a story for another time.