I had the strangest day today. I felt an awful lot like Alice must have after she went down the rabbit hole. I worked through the morning and visited with you wonderful folks. The afternoon I reserved for picking up my kid’s medical records- their pediatrician just passed away and the office manager was kind enough to collect the records and let me pick them up at her home. After that, I planned to make the 90-minute trek out to my ex’s house to pick the kiddos up.
Picking up the records was a little emotional. I loved that doctor and his staff was wonderful. I spent about 30 minutes chatting with the office manager and decided to collect myself a bit before the drive ahead. The neighborhood was “slightly less than affluent,” if you know what I mean, but I spent several years when I was younger living in a house nearby and didn’t think much of it. I stopped in a grocery store parking lot, picked up one of the records, and began to snoop.
In less than two minutes, a young man approached me. I’m guessing he was in his early 20s. He was upset and looked like he was about to cry. He asked me for bus fare. I told him I might be able to scrounge up $2 if I was lucky, but if I had it, it was his. While I was digging, he started talking about making a call. I offered him my cell phone. I don’t know the whole story, but the guy suddenly found himself homeless, and was trying to get in touch with a family member who lived 90 minutes away… really close to where I was headed. I told him I’d drive him there myself. (Yes, I also made him promise that he wasn’t an axe murderer.)
While he continued trying to reach family, we were approached by an older couple. The woman was in a wheel chair. The man spoke and said they were from Alaska- that they were both diabetic and hungry, and wanted to know if I had any change to spare. I hadn’t handed over my last $2 to the guy yet, so I turned to him and said, “You won’t need that bus fare after all, right?” He just made a face at me and gestured towards the couple.
The woman chimed up with how grateful they were. For whatever reason, she kept calling me “Ladybug,” but it felt warm, so I went with it. Her husband told me thank you and they assured me it would come back to me ten-times over. I don’t really believe in all that jazz, but they were nice enough, so I smiled, nodded, and wished them well. The man made a gesture that I’m sure I can’t repeat. It involved touching his forehead, making a circle motion with his hands, and then pushing them outward in a giving motion. He insisted that I do it with him a few times, and goodness knows I tired. Here I am, in a rough neighborhood, some guy using my phone, and some other guy I don’t know having me do obscure hand gestures, and I’m thinking “How the heck did I wind up here?” I did ask him what the gesture meant. He said it was something along the lines of “You’ll always be in my thoughts.” I think there’s a very good chance he made that up, but that’s cool.
The couple leaves and the guy gets done on my phone. He can’t get in touch with the people 90 minutes away, so he says he’ll just go to his friend’s house down the street. I offer him a lift there and we find ourselves on the very same street I was on earlier picking up the records, only the guy’s on my phone again and his friend happened to be back at the grocery store we’d just left… by chance.
We go back and I drop the guy off. About an hour into the ride to my ex’s, I feel something tickling my arm. I look down… it’s a ladybug.
