A Drive-By Act of Kindness

by John Robinson

My wife and I are in our 60s, and we were traveling a couple of summers ago on a sparsely populated stretch of dirt road in rural S. E. Ohio when we got a flat tire.  My mind raced into worst-case-scenario mode.  If I couldn’t change the tire, even if we had access to cell-phone service (unlikely), we didn’t know where we were, so we would have a hard time telling the road-service tow truck where to find us.  It could take hours to be rescued.

I could see that just ahead the dirt road merged with a paved two-lane road, so we drove that far so we could pull onto the berm to change the tire.  The problem was that we were pulled off onto a sharp bend in the road, and it was going to be dangerous for me to change the tire, because I would be crouched out in the lane where an oncoming car might not see me as it came around the bend.

Resigned to having a terrible day, I didn’t even have time to get out of the car before a fellow in a pick-up truck pulled off the road across from us, came over to the car, and said, “Can I change that tire for you?”  (Notice that he didn’t ask if he could HELP me change the tire.)

He was still getting the jack and spare tire out of the trunk when ANOTHER fellow pulled over and came over to help.  The two of them knew each other and caught up on things while they quickly changed our tire.  In only about 20 minutes after we had pulled off to the side of that paved road, we were on our way.  It was the shortest terrible day I had ever had.

I told the two men that they were like Guardian Angels, and said that we couldn’t thank them enough.  They said it was nothing and went on their way.

When I got back into the car I said this silent prayer: “God, grant each of them an extra-special blessing this week.”

–John Robinson

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John Can be found at The Daily Graff

His photoblog combines photographs with humorous captions.

Why “Graff”? It’s a play on the word “Graph” (i.e., each post falls somewhere on a scale “between a groan and a laugh [ laff ] “). “The Daily Graugh,” aside from being unpronounceable, would have sounded like a newspaper in 18th-Century Scotland.

“I didn’t say it made sense.” — John A. Robinson

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