9. For Someone Else
I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I sure did remember this pair of events from over twenty years ago.
I was driving down the freeway in a big city after work and my car stalled in the left lane. Some guy immediately came up and offered to tow me to the next off-ramp with a tow strap. He dropped me off, and I tried giving him some money.
He declined, telling me to instead do something nice for someone else.
A week later, there was a rare downpour as I got in my car (same one, fixed) after work. Two scruffy-looking guys came running up to me and one said, “Hey brother, we missed our bus.” He wanted to know if I could give the two of them a ride. This was not the best part of town, and I wouldn’t have been inclined to let them in, but I remembered what that Good Samaritan had told me. Pay it forward. OK, I said, hop in.
We drove onto the freeway and I made all my usual turns heading home. It was the same way my two passengers wanted to go. After a while, we got to an exit where they asked to be let off.
It was the same exact spot, in a city of millions of people, where that other guy had unhitched my car from his truck and told me to do something nice for someone else.