Pay it Forward

We’ve all been there, in fact, we’re there right now. Driving down the highway and the guy/gal in front of you has cleared the windshield but there’s a mountain of snow on the roof. Sometimes it’s quite entertaining when they pull up to a stop and that entire mountain slides down their windshield, love it, however sometimes it’s not so nice. Clouds of snow trailing the vehicle making visibility almost non-existent if you happen to be the one behind them.
Even more ominous are the ones that clear the snow but left a beautiful sheet of ice on top and turned it into a deadly projectile at 100km/h. These are the wingnuts that plead, “It’s too high to reach”, “I had to leave because I was late”, “My snow brush broke” etc, etc, etc. Cry me a river.
I was on a long stretch of busy 2 lane highway a couple of days ago and all of a sudden in the middle of nowhere there was a traffic jam. I thought at first it was an accident but there were no emergency vehicles with the exception of an OPP car with two big officers trying to push an SUV out of a ditch, well, kind of a ditch, more like a snowmobile trail 9 inches deep in snow. They were having no luck and some in the long line of waiting cars, had started honking. I thought to myself, it seemed a no brainer to help push the car out and we could all move on. Now I’m almost 60 and I had that thought – I wonder why all the people in such a hurry on the road didn’t think that! Hmmm. I rolled my window down and asked the officers if they could use a hand, “the more the merrier” came the response. It didn’t take rocket science to park my car and walk over and on the way enlisted some of those impatient drivers who all of a sudden grew a heart or didn’t want to be outdone by an old lady. The car was out of the ditch in 2 minutes.
Moral: haste makes waste – sometimes when you’re in the biggest hurry the most unexpected delays will slow you down. The prize is not arriving at your destination on time, but how you made the journey.