Strangers in Cars

Years ago, while in my mid 20s and working a commissioned sales job (a story for another time), it was late and a relatively warm fall in Charlottesville, and I was recovering from a chemical exposure, feeling generally flu-like and weak though having to present as totally put together and healthy.  It was raining, and I had been driving through one of my favorite neighborhood streets in C'ville (as it is affectionately known).  Favorite streets are not hard to come by in Charlottesville, a place of rolling hills, which come alive in blooms in the spring time, and interesting Southern architecture.

This road was a favorite because at a certain bend, where I was stranded, there were large tree and azalea covered yards that gave the area a park-like feeling.  So there I am, standing under my umbrella dressed in my cotton and silk blend business suit and ostrich leather, taupe, strappy open-toed shoes, wet from head to toe, and wondering if I had the energy to walk around the neighborhood searching for a phone.  My car's tire was flat, and I simply did not have the strength to remove lugs nuts.  I tried; that's why I was wet.


Suddenly, a handsome middle-aged man pulled up behind my car (as a type, he was a cross between Robert Redford and Paul Newman, blonde hair and all).  He was dressed in a beautiful wool tweed jacket and kakis, looking quite like a UVa (University of Virginia) professor, although his was also standard male dress for landed gentry in C'ville at the time.  (Izod polo shirts in the summer and tweed jackets in the winter.)  I'm not certain how it was decided that my only option was to change the tire, but my night in shining, er, fuzzy tweed took the time to change my tire in what became a deluge, soaking himself from head to foot despite my efforts to protect him with my umbrella.

He grumped at me the whole time, as if I were a foolish, weak woman who should not have been out in the rain making him change my tire.  As terrible as I felt physically and about the situation I'd gotten the two of us into, it was enough to stand there wielding an umbrella.  Financially, I'd been living on the edge for a while, in training for this, my new job, and he was a godsend.  Paying for towing would have put a serious dent in my ex-Y's and my food budget for the month.

Once the handsome stranger succeeded at putting on my spare (for the young, back then, spares were real tires and not tiny substitutes meant to get you to the nearest service station), things got awkward.  I could tell he was not happy to be all wet, and financially I was in no position to reimburse him for his efforts.  (My nice car, clothes and the shoes were a major investment in looking the part of someone who would one day be making enough money to support herself and her husband, a grad student at UVa.  Business dress required by my sales manager.)  With Asperger's I often have trouble processing information in the moment--so I have lots of woulda, coulda, shoulda moments--, and while I couldn't afford towing, I probably could have afforded to get his jacked dry cleaned; of course, my brain didn't make this connection, focused as it was on his efforts to change the tire, until he was long gone.

My answer to the dilemma before me was to ask him for his full name.  In payment for a good deed, the handsome man received a sincere thank you and the feeling he'd be left with for having helped someone in need.  And a story he could recount later over a warm drink, probably scotch, which could include, if he wanted, my ungenerous lack of an offer to reimburse.  (Later, I tried to find a listing for him so I could send a Thank You card and make offer to have his jacket cleaned, but was unable to locate him; yes, the Internet did not exist and so only the phone book was at my disposal.)

I also told him that in payment I would help someone else in need and give him, his good name, as the reason for helping.  In essence, I promised to pay it forward before that phrase was made popular by a film of the same name.

The weather changed as quickly as I was provided an opportunity to repay the handsome man.  About three weeks later, as I rounded the exit lane of an overpass with the snow coming down fast and furious, before me, a gentlemen in a gray 3-piece business suit stood next to his disabled gray Mercedes, caught in the unexpected change in the weather without a coat, hat, and gloves.  (Back then, Mercedes and BMWs crowded the C'ville roadways, with Volvos bringing up a close 3rd.  As you might imagine, sharing the road with cars of such uniformity, was about as annoying as seeing and hearing Thomas Jefferson's name ALL the time, and also being surrounded in the summer by a gazillion Izod shirts on men and women alike, espadrilles, madras shorts on the men, and pink and green clothing on the women.  Did I mention that the area is beautiful?)

Helping the man in the 3-piece suit would inconvenience me, and that seemed fitting given the handsome man's inconvenience.  So I decided to pull over and offer help.  I was lectured the whole way to the repair shop.  As it turns out, the gentleman had a 20 something daughter and he would be telling her to never stop and give a man a lift, as much as he appreciated my stopping.  That said, he was gracious (he didn't offer to repay me for my efforts and I considered that to be good graces).  I did, however, explain that I was helping him, in part, because the handsome man went out of his way to help me.

As providence would have it, my commissioned sales jobs required that I cold call prospective clients, and within the month I found myself talking to the man in the 3-piece suit.  I hadn't gotten his name, but he had asked me for mine when I recounted the story of the handsome man and gave him the man's name, telling him he could thank the handsome man if he liked.

Once he heard my name, the cold call "brush off" turned in an instant to an excited recounting of the man in the 3-piece suit's opportunity to pay it forward.  In short order he had been in a position to inconvenience himself on the way to work to help another stranded motorist--a young woman who would be running late for a university exam if she didn't make it to class on time--, and he told the person he helped, in the same way that I had told him, "Don't thank me, thank ____________.  She's the reason I'm helping you today."

Although I have many stranger in cars stories (some are stories for another time), I like to think that this particular one went on.  One long chain of one person helping another and passing along the name of another in thanks.

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Clairelicious Designs (ClaireliciousDesigns - tees and other things)

Yes, it has been that sort of week t-shirt

Do your part... be more loving today mug

Do your part t-shirt

Love lights up the sky for light colored T-shirt

Love lights the whole sky.... (Hafiz of Shiraz quotation) t-shirt

It's the message not the messenger t-shirt

Do the next right thing t-shirt

As for me I wear rose colored glasses t-shirt

Be brave child... t-shirt (also two mug designs, poster, etc.)

Love life back mug

Love life back t-shirt