Lend A Hand

For me, being a good person comes naturally. Helping people is in my nature and I do it every chance I can. I never expect anything back, if I have something to offer that will help another then why not help them. Just knowing I can make someone’s day better makes me feel happy and proud of myself. It makes me feel good. There are countless times where I have put myself last for days on end to help people and put them before me, whether it is a friend or a stranger. I know where I stand so sometimes putting others first is what needs to be done. I have been helped multiple times in return, from needing someone to vent to, borrowing an item I need for the day, someone paying for my meal or giving me a place to sleep, watching my dog while I work or help me with school. There are countless acts of kindness I have been granted from friends and people I barely know. Helping people is what makes the world go round.

Anyone that knows me personally or even from social media could tell you that I run out of gas a lot and for some reason I still have not taken it upon myself to buy a gas can to leave in my trunk. I do have a viable excuse though, my car’s gas gauge does not work so I go off my trip which changes fairly often because I put 22’s (tires) on my car which is not stock size so it throws off my mileage and how fast I am going. Multiple people have helped me countless times to get me gas. One time stands out more than any other time though because out of anyone that could have helped me a coworker that I barely knew came to my rescue. I would say this incident happened around September of last year. Me and a couple friends were heading to get our nails done I believe and while crossing over the Memorial Bridge in Auburn, my car shut off going at about 60 MPH. When your car shuts off while you’re driving everything locks up, in my case, my power steering turned off and my brakes became tough to push. So I pulled off to the side right after the guardrail ended and parked it.

Now me and my friends were sitting here thinking who we could call that would have a gas can that could either bring us some gas or pick me up to go get some. Everyone that we texted could not come out and help us so we decided to post on our stories and just wait for someone to answer. Multiple people who had passed me called me asking why I was sitting on the side of the road but none turned around to help. After waiting about half an hour my friend Connor, who was on his way to meet his family and girlfriend for a movie, passed by and called to ask if I was okay. He heard my situation and ran all the way home to get a gas can for me then went to the store and picked up some gas. While we were waiting for him a cop pulled up behind me to check out the situation and asked if there was anything he could do. Which was very nice of him. Connor eventually shows up and gives me just enough gas to get me to the nearest gas station to fill up. In the end, Connor missed a good chunk of his movie and was late meeting up with his family to help a coworker he barely knew. That’s what I call a true friend.

Later in the year Connor had been talking about getting interior lights in his car since he liked the way I did mine and he wouldn’t stop talking about it. So I went out of my way to buy him a set of lights. He did not know how to install them so he was worried about needing to pay someone for it. I insisted I would do it myself sometime so he didn’t have to go through the trouble and he could learn how to do it himself. So one day after work I installed them for him and it was actually really easy. It was a set of four so they went in the front and rear. He had fuzzy type material on the back of his seats so it was a pain to get them to stick but we improvised and used super glue. Unfortunately, after a while they started to fall off which was becoming a pain so I ended up zip tying them, but then Connor got a new car and sold his old one and let the lights go with the car so now it’s not our problem anymore. Connors new car is a lot newer and fancier so instead of getting light strips like we did for his first car he just bought blue light bulbs to put in his interior lights and got a bunch of add ons to customize the inside of the car. He actually did all of this by himself and even though it wasn’t hard he gives all his credit to me. He said he would have never thought or gotten into customization if it wasn’t for me and what I did with my vehicle. Moral of the story is that helping people is good. It’s the little things that matter and mean the most. You might think an action can be so little and useless, but most of the time in the other person’s perspective it’s a big help and means a lot. “A friend in need is a friend indeed” is the best way to describe Connor and I’s friendship. Before he brought me gas I only thought of him as a coworker, but after he helped me we both decided that friends was a better descriptive word for our relationship.

Photo by Awesome Joolie on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA