i guess i should have heard of that from you

by snaggle at 07:18 AM on July 24, 2005

I just got home. It's 4:02 am on a Sunday morning. My Saturday was fairly uneventful, in general : I didn't do much during the day besides yoga at 10:30, since I was up at 8. Then I planned to do laundry when I got home, but I was too unmotivated (gotta change that... too much dirty laundry. Maybe a fluff & fold...) Then in the evening, I went to join some friends from out-of-town up in Pasadena for dinner.

And of course, as always happens with an uneventful day, somethign eventful happened : I got a flat tire on the freeway.

I've experienced three flat tires in my life: two were in my car (including tonight) and one was in a friend's car. All three times, however, I was driving. The first was in my friend's car, and I thought to myself "What's this helicopter noise? Why are they flying so close to us?" and that's when my friend who I was driving woke up and said "PULL OVER!! THAT'S A FLAT TIRE!!"

And so we changed a flat tire on the side of the highway in Iowa. Number two was in my car, but I'd been parked and it must have been a slow leak, as it was fine when I left my car and flat when I came back many hours later. As it was 3 am and I couldn't find my jack, since it wasn't where I expected it to be (having never looked for it before) I called Triple A and had them change it out for me.

Tonight, however, it was about 7 pm and I was flying along on the freeway when suddenly I thought, "OK, I know I need an alignment, but this is ridiculous!" And then the helicopter noises started. I pulled off into an emergency turnoff and saw that yes, indeed, I had a flat tire. I limped my car to the next exit, where for the next hour I managed to change the tire, having witnessed it once and with the assistance of my car's manual.

This, however, was not the event I wished to talk about.

After dinner in Pasadena, I came back down to West Hollywood and met some friends out at the bars. After close, we parted ways and I started back to my car. I happened upon a very, very drunk boy holding onto a lamppost for dear life. Over the course of the next two hours I proceeded to escort him to a plot of grass, assist him in vomiting, attempted to call his friends who'd left him (on his birthday no less) and tried to get him to walk as far as my car so I could take him home. However, I couldn't get him to walk very far at all, and after an hour of failing to rouse him more than a few feet from him chosen stand of grass, I flagged down a taxi, gave the driver more than enough for the fare and his troubles, and sent the young lad on his way.

I hope he arrived okay. I have no way of knowing, as I didn't know the kid at all, before finding him wrapped around the lamppost. I thought originally I could just escort him, stumbling, to my car and take him home, but that proved impossible. So instead, I gave the cabbie $50 for a $25 fare to make sure he got home, and to compsensate for any lost time he may have while waiting on the side of the road while the chap vomited.

Once again, in the same vein as my last post: kindness from strangers. This time I was able to give it. I would have given him a ride to his place, but instead I sent him home in a taxi after two hours of cajoling, water-forcing, verbal reassurement, and back-stroking. He looked better than he was when I found him, minus the sleepiness of drunkenness.

I hope he got home all right. I told him that we'd all been there, and we have: not necessarily needing strangers to care for us on the side of the road, but strangers have certainly helped us all.

I can't help but be concerned, however, that I'm kind of happy that I got to help someone out tonight. Is it truly a selfless, helping act if you derive some pleasure from it? We've discussed this plenty, theoretically, in my philosophy classes, but that didn't occur to me as I tried to help him. All I could think of was "Have I been this way? Did I need people to help me? Can this repay or give me credit towards any karmic debt I may have?"