My most romantic moment.
This was my most romantic moment, but don't read it - I don't want anyone to know about it:
As I rounded the corner and began to approach my house, on my way home from the First National Bank - where I worked, I noticed a very old man on a tricycle. Based on looking at him, one would think that the country’s last Civil War Veteran was out for a joyride, and the hospital was searching in full fleet trying to find him and put him back on life support. As I was checking the mailbox he stopped and asked me a question.
“Excuse me,” he managed out of his dry, tired throat. His eyes looked older than his body; his haggard face looked like the leather on a pair of old cowboy boots. “Where is Sheryl Drive?”
I recognized the street name immediately; it was in the adjacent neighborhood.
“Well sir, if you go out of the subdivision and take a left, it is the very next neighborhood,” I instructed while pointing and indicating where he should go.
“Thank you.”
The frail man continued on his tricycle down the street. I grabbed the mail and continued on up my driveway into the house. Thoughts of the old man wouldn’t leave my mind. ‘What if he doesn’t get back?’ ‘What if he goes the wrong way?’ ‘What if he simultaneously has a seizure, stroke and heart attack after getting hit by a semi-truck while riding?’
With that entire process racing through my mind, my conscience hit me in the head with a baseball bat. I went back out to check on his progress. Sure enough, he had continued going around my neighborhood. I jogged across the block to him.
“Sir, you said you wanted to get to Sheryl Drive?” I asked once I had reached him.
He stopped and looked up at me. “Yes, I have gotten there?”
That was when I figured he’d need more than directions.
“Not quite. I can take you there if you’d like,” I implored.
“Please, I’m lost,” he told me again as if it was the first time. “I just wanted to get a little bit of exercise and now I don’t know where to go.”
It doesn’t take very long to get to where he needed to be. What was also nice was the fact that it was, quite possibly the most beautiful day in the history of Florida. I had nothing to do, and he had a desperate need of someone at the time. We got back to the front of the neighborhood, and as I told him to go left he veered into the road.
“Sir, it would be a lot easier on the sidewalk,” I blurted out as I grabbed the handle bar and guided him onto the gray pavement.
“Oh, it is. Thank you.” The man seemed to be senile. As he looked at the bank across the street, he asked if it was where I went to school. I told him it was, and he began to explain that he had grown up and gone to school in Wisconsin, and it was much colder there.
“The University of Wisconsin?” I asked him. He replied robotically as if he had told it a hundred times. “ No, I went up to 8th grade, it was all we could afford.”
"I though school was free back then too."
"It was," he muttered.
Once we got farther down the sidewalk I asked a little more about him. He explained that he worked in a factory for most of his life and he inhaled to many gas fumes. This resulted in him requiring 18 hours of oxygen every day. That really began to paint the picture of the situation: he should not have been outside exercising. I began to thank the city for putting the two subdivisions so close together.
We came to the entrance of his neighborhood, and turned inside.
“I live at 17…1712. I have a white station wagon but Dr. Johnson won’t let me drive it anymore,” he mumbled to me. The man peddled on into the neighborhood as more and more I realized how important it was to find his house. Once again, he and I were lucky. We got to his house quickly because it was the 3rd on the right. I flinched as he slowly got off of his tricycle, as if to catch him. He stood up and shook my hand.
“Thank you young man. Without you, I would have never made it home.” I believed him. He slowly put one foot in front of the other until he slid through the doorway into his house.
As I strode home, I shuddered off the thoughts of what could have happened to him had I not gone back out to check on him. My conscience smiled discreetly and kissed that bat. In my mind I kissed it too. I hoped the man hadn’t over-exerted himself. Knowing no idea how long he had been riding, I had no real gauge of his fatigue other than his appearance. Despite these things he was home, back where he belonged. I got back to mine. It seemed so stereotypical; like helping a lady cross the street or picking up dropped change. But it was enough for me. It was enough to make the day seem worthwhile. Tuesday laughed quietly in the wind.
