Blogger’s note: My sister Laura has commuted to work from the country to downtown for many years. During those years she has seen many facts of human nature. Read on for two such examples!

The Day Laura Snapped

It was a dark and rainy evening. I was one in a line of cars inching along through downtown, after a long day’s work, towards the crosstown expressway. Suddenly, the line of cars stopped. Directly in front of me a gentleman in a large van had stopped to pick up a mattress being delivered to him from the adjacent mattress store. He obviously did not want to lose his place in line by pulling off the road to pick up the mattress. After a few minutes of seeing him stroking his chin, glancing back and forth from the mattress to the back of his van, with an occasional slight smile aimed at the line of blocked cars, it occurred to me that he was enjoying this situation a bit too much.

Suddenly, I snapped. I put my car in park and stepped out. I walked up to him, put on my most patient and friendly smile, and said, “Excuse me sir, but do you need some help with that mattress?”

“Well, ah, uh,” he sputtered, “I suppose I do.”

Single handedly, I grabbed the large bulky queen sized mattress and shoved it into the back of his van.

Still stammering, he said, “I, uh, didn’t think it would fit.”

“It looks like it fits just fine,” I replied. “Now let’s all be on our way.”

Thus dismissed, he leapt into his van to roar off toward the expressway, and the rest of us followed.

                                                  One More Commuting Story

When eldest daughter was attending Governor’s School, I would take her to the bus in the morning a couple of times a week, picking up a classmate, whose parents would cover the other days in the carpool.  Then I would go on to work downtown.  One morning as we were about to leave, I noticed my car had a flat tire. There was no time to change it without missing the bus. I decided to take the old farm truck, not realizing the battery had only three more starts. We made it to the bus, and as I was driving through Richmond streets on the way to my parking deck, I killed the engine- and then it would not restart.

As I was getting out of the truck to raise the hood, a bleach blonde in heels and pencil skirt minced by me, tossing back over her shoulder, “Why don’t you move that truck out of the street, ma’am?” Plaintively I called after her, “Why don’t you help me?” but she must not have heard.

Then two streetwise looking young men stopped to help. They said they would push while I “popped the clutch.” The results were predictable, since when Daddy had tried to explain the concept of popping the clutch, my mind would glaze over, same as with him when I would try to explain how a layer of the element iridium in the soil proves that a large meteorite crashed into the Earth.

Out of time and patience, one of the two gentlemen suggested I move over and he would pop the clutch while the other pushed. Remembering my early lessons of not being in a vehicle with a strange man, I grabbed my purse and jumped out.

They left the truck idling on a level spot and disappeared on their way to do other good deeds before I even had a chance to thank them.

I drove straight to trusty Allen Tire, who quickly installed a new battery. I made it to work without much time wasted.