Let your light shine through me...
I thought I would share a true story with my livejournal. Due to the lack of internet I was unable to post this when it actually happened.
A few weeks ago I was at the Carvel in Port Jeff after bowling. It was right after we got that foot of snow. I saw this woman stumbling in the snow and as I sat there holding onto my sundae but I was too wrapped up in my thoughts to see her walking closer to the car. She knocked on the window and I rolled it down.
She looked flustered and her arms were full of bags from the Rite Aid across the street. She asked me if I could give her a ride down the street to help her get a little closer to her house. She explained that she was having a hard time walking because the snow had been plowed onto the sidewalks, forcing her to walk in the road.
I told her it wasn't my car. But as I said it I remembered living in Bayport and how much it sucked when they would plow the roads and we would have to walk to school while avoiding traffic and giant puddles. It fucking sucked.
"Do you live close to here?" I asked.
She pointed behind Carvel. "About two blocks from here."
So I told her to get in and we began to drive. She told me I could just drop her off at her corner but I insisted that I didn't mind pulling up to her house. Before she got out she said,
"I really am thankful for you helping me. Your parents raised you well. My name is Anna."
I smiled and gave her my name.
Then suddenly we were talking about how how she was Greek. I told her how Yia Yia had been from Creed and how my great grandfather had been from Athens. Her parents had lived a few miles away from Athens.
As we talked she told me she was actually a professor. An injury in the past had put her on disability and she was unable to drive and lived alone in the little house we were parked in front of.
She told me how she spent a few years in England, France, and even China.
Then she surprised me even more after I expressed how I was very into literature and writing.
"I must say as much as I like Albert Camus I'm not quite sure he should have gotten that Nobel prize for French literature..."
I almost had a heart attack. We ended up sitting in the car talking about The Stranger and the connections between it and The Plague.
We talked about that for a while, touched on some more classics (ie: The Bell Jar, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird)
Then she invited me to her art showing in April.
Imagine that- picking up a stranger, giving her a ride, thinking she just needs a ride from point A to point B, and you end up talking about The Stranger!!!!!!!!
touche life.