Saturday, April 3, 2010

The Random Kindness of Strangers

I am almost inexpressibly grateful for very nice strangers. Yesterday was quite an adventure, but I'd already started my blog before the adventure occurred, so I decided to blog about it today instead. My roommate, another friend, and I drove down to St. George yesterday, and it was quite possibly the most eventful, and terrifying, road trip of my life. But I suppose that's what makes life fun.

We began the trip at 5:30 in the afternoon, and I couldn't have been happier. Something about leaving the cold, gray skies of Provo for the sunny blue of St. George made me ridiculously giddy ALL DAY. The trip was going rather smoothly for the first few hours because I fell asleep, as per usual. Until I suddenly felt like we were driving through an earthquake and heard what sounded like gunfire. Talk about a startling wake up call.

What happened? Well, the tread on the tire started shredding and caught on the underside of the car, which then pulled of a piece of the outer car shell (whatever that's called), which then caused the tire to completely blow. And left us stranded on the side of the freeway, three helpless college girls who know nothing about a car except how to drive it, and sometimes I wonder about that.

Suddenly, the most wonderful thing happened. A car pulled off the road behind us, and a middle-aged man we'd never seen before got out. He then spoke the most welcome words possible: "Do you guys need any help?" Did we ever! It took about an hour, but at the end of those sixty minutes we had a fresh new tire and were on our way once again. Thanks almost completely to a stranger who happened to have the decency to stop and help, despite the wife and four kids he had in the car. We'd probably still be stranded if not for him. So I can hardly even express how grateful I am for the random kindness of strangers. It practically saved our lives yesterday.

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