I Have Always Depended on the Kindness of Strangers
by Zayne Reeves

This is a simple thank you to someone who displayed extraordinary generosity towards me over the Christmas holidays.  I was on a road trip to visit a friend and grappling with something I don't see very much of in my homestate of Alabama: snow.  I had managed to get through two states with no problem, but the recent blizzard in Kentucky laid a man-sized beatdown on my car and my already limited navigational skills.  With less than fifty miles to my destination, I decided to turn off at the nearest exit to grab a Coke and stretch my legs.  As usual, I didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to the fact that there were no signs on the turnoff indicating a gas station or fast food joint.  After driving through half-a-mile of frozen tundra (okay, okay....I'm taking a license here!) I realized that I needed to turn around and find another exit.

Unfamiliar with the area and finding it difficult (on account of the snow) to find a good spot to turn around, I settled on a winding little country road. Twenty seconds later, half of my car was buried in snow. Seldom have I ever wanted to punch myself while simultaneously crying my eyes out.  Less than an hour to go, after four hours of smooth, incident free driving, I found myself completely fucked.  I started to call Chevy's 24 hour emergency service number and that's when I noticed I had one bar of service on my cell phone.  It truly looked like I had picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. 

And that's when I experienced a random act of kindness that was so pure and true and unselfish that it almost seemed unreal to the point where I expected the other shoe to drop and find myself abducted or robbed at gunpoint.  A man in a beat-up pickup truck stopped beside me on that country road and asked if I needed help. He then proceeded to grab a large tow chain from his truck and hooked up our two vehicles, told me what I needed to do and then carefully pulled me out of the snow ditch in a matter of seconds. I thanked him profusely and offered him $20 for his troubles, which he refused. I exchanged a few pleasantries with him, thanked him again and then he drove off.

What could have been a day long saga of waiting in the snow for a Chevy tow truck to be dispatched to Elizabethtown, Kentucky was over almost as quickly as it began and I was free to complete my drive, hang out with my friend and have a perfectly good time. To all the good Samaritans out there helping idiots like me, I salute you.

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