When I was really small -- too small to remember, really -- my mom got a flat tire on the highway on the way to taking my sister and me to summer camp or something. I think the highway might have been GA-400, back when 400 wasn't always busy busy busy and not all the cars drove at 70+ miles per hour. At the very least, it was not a local road. My mom pulled over, and my sister and I, who were maybe four and eight years old, got out with her. My mom didn't know how to change a flat tire, and this was years before we would get cell phones, so my mom sort of walked around the car examining the flat and panicking quietly. Even though I didn't really understand the situation, I remember feeling that this wasn't very good, with the cars whizzing by and the wind whipping around.
But thankfully, some good samaritans came to the rescue. In my memory, we didn't have to wait long before we saw them slowing down -- three middle-aged guys in a truck, Southern accents. They hopped out and offered to change the tire, and in a few minutes they were done. My mother thanked them profusely. "How can I repay you?" she asked. They wouldn't take any money, so my mom offered, "I can cook you dinner or something" -- but they chuckled and graciously said no thank you. That offer is the only thing I remember for sure (my sister and I used to tease my mom about it sometimes whenever this incident came up in casual conversation). Then they got back in their truck and drove off. I don't think we even got their names.
Nowadays, when I drive by cars with their emergency lights flashing on the side of the road and someone standing outside -- or even just abandoned cars, their drivers perhaps gone on to search for help -- I almost always think about those three men. I wonder where they were headed, and what compelled them to make that split-second decision to stop when they saw an Asian mother and her two small kids looking helpless on the side of the road. I wonder what the dialogue in the truck was like, whether one of the guys pointed and said, "Hey, they look like they need help, pull over!" and the driver did so without question. I wonder about us, about what we would have gone through if they hadn't stopped -- I mean, we probably could've gotten help somehow, but it probably would have been much more frustrating and involved lots more tears.
Most of all, I wonder whether, if I saw someone on the side of the road, I would do the same thing. The answer, of course, is probably not. Almost everyone has cellphones these days, and I still don't know how to change a flat tire, so I wouldn't be much help anyway. I also think about how hard it is nowadays, especially on the highway, to actually stop in the first place -- everyone drives so quickly that it's rather dangerous to stop in time.
So it makes me appreciate just how lucky we were that those guys stopped that day. I wish that I could say that I've done random acts of kindness like that, too.
