Good Samaritans

I hate to admit it, but I am not generally a people person. People are just so mean and rude; it makes me crazy and a bit ashamed to be one of us sometimes. But as great as I can be (being human and all) at having a negative attitude someone always has to come around and change it.

Tonight I was heading out to the dentist’s at the last minute, of course. I have to drive quite a ways down a narrow, one lane in each direction road to get there and not far down it there was a car parked funny almost in the trees off the side of the road and a guy standing in the road, waving his arms.

My bad karma thought process… car jackers? An accident? Why are they making us stop when I have somewhere to be in 20 minutes and I see someone with a cell phone?

As it turned out there was an electric wire down, right across the road from windshield height to the ground as it crossed, completely blocking the road and strategically placed to cause a horrible accident. These people had seen it about a minute before we came up the road and stopped what they were doing to direct traffic in both directions around the wire. We could only pass on one side of the road so the 2 directions had to take turns to get by.

I find it amazing that there were about 10 strangers there working together to make sure everyone else was safe. After all, they too were driving somewhere and they could have just driven around it and went on.

I don’t know if I am just easy to impress or not, but it seemed like a really big deal to me.

I see people go out of their way for others fairly often here, though usually it’s for animals. There’s a lot of opportunity for that in Florida! I’ve seen a semi pulled over while the rough and tough looking driver carried a big turtle to the side of the road, people stop for ducks, deer too close to the edge of the road, even a big alligator once.

My favorite was a red corvette that whipped past me on that same narrow road. He was in such a hurry I jumped when he went by because he wasn’t even in my rear view mirror a minute before. Then I came around a corner and he was just stopped. Why? We waited about 5 minutes while a couple of sand cranes walked slowly across the road.

I saw these cranes at the lake, not crossing the road (insert joke here) but still. Kind of makes you all warm and fuzzy doesn’t it?