fix my car

I was driving down the road when my car started to sputter and shake. With a sickening lurch the car floated to a stop in the middle of a busy road. A horn blared behind me. I quickly flipped on my emergency lights and stepped out of my car to wave the person by.

With an angry gesture the man roared around me.

I sat back in my car and tried to start the engine up but there was no sign of life. I quickly jumped out of my car again; my heart fluttering in my chest as a mild sense of urgency and panic set it.

Figures, my car would die and I was obviously unable to get out of the intersection on my own. The occupants of the other vehicles only swerved around me with the insistent sound of angry horns and enraged profanities screamed out the window. What had happened to the decent citizens of Grants Pass?

Even as I tried to push the car on my own; no one stopped to assist me. In desperation I hopped back into the drivers seat and tried the engine again. Nothing. My breath hitched as a sob caught in my throat. Desperately I phoned everyone I could think of and no one answered their phones; cell phones...home phones no one was there.

Almost hysterically I felt, briefly, like I was the last person on Earth. Of course the people still honking and yelling at me proved that thought to be anything but true. I no longer knew what to do so I sat in the car and started to cry. Why wouldn't anyone stop and help me?

Just as my tears completely overwhelmed me. My knight in shining armor arrived. Sure he wasn't tall, dark and handsome. Sure he didn't have a white horse; or for that matter any armor. Instead my knight took the form of a 70 year old man in a flannel shirt, overalls and a red Nissan pickup.

Out of every single person who passed me that day; the one and only person to help me was a little old man who was barely able to help me push my car. Between the two of us we got it out of the intersection and into a parking lot.

My appreciation gushed out of me in an overwhelming tide; but this kind stranger – who's name I never learned – refused any sort of payment or token of my gratitude. He left as quickly as he had come; the only proof that he did in fact exist was my car now sitting in a parking lot instead of the middle of the busy street.