Also known as the kindness of strangers
As we headed into New York’s Central Station, heading home, and loaded down with six months’ worth of luggage, the wheels of the newly purchased secondhand suitcase caught in the tracks of the down escalator, trapping Ken and sending him sprawling across the station’s marble floor. To add insult to injury, his fully loaded and very heavy backpack come down on top of him, driving him painfully into that very hard floor a second time an instant later.
I was several steps ahead, loaded down with my share of the luggage and by the time I realized something had happened and turned around, two men had sprung into action and were helping Ken to his feet, ensuring he hadn’t hit his head on the floor, making sure he was OK, and then helping get the luggage upright. One of them had abandoned his own luggage — open and in the midst of reorganizing — to help. They got Ken squared away and under protest, left him to his own devices to get underway again.
As we stood at the Canadian check in at the station, one of the men (the one with his suitcase open and belongings scattered an round him), came over to Ken to confirm that he was OK, yet again, gave him a two-armed hug and wished him a safe onward journey “my friend”. Ken hadn’t convinced him that he hadn’t hit his head and the nice man wanted to be doubly sure Ken was all right. The kindness of strangers. Various people helped us with luggage after that — red caps and porters, in stations and hotels, and all went beyond the steps we paid them for. In Toronto at the hotel for example, our luggage was not just taken down to the hotel door, but right across the street, into the train station and right to the red cap station there.
We have been given the gift of these random acts of kindness several times throughout our trip. Store clerks, restaurant servers, landlords and ladies, museum, church and gallery docents, strangers on the street have helped us through the language, culture and geographical barriers with smiles and encouragement.
We started the trip running through the airport, not just once but twice as Air Canada made arrangements for our journey after our first flight was so late we couldn’t make on onward connections. You gotta hate Air Canada, it’s the Canadian thing to do, but boy they came through for us, escorting us through security, getting us into the fast lane, facilitating luggage identification at the border crossing and getting us to Boston only an hour or two later than expected. So thank you Air Canada.
Then there was our “Voila” guy in Boston who helped us buy our subway tickets from an unfriendly and very uncooperative machine, and got us to Fenway Park in time to see the Red Sox play (and lose) in that iconic venue.
We arrived at our Longues sur mer home (Normandy, France) to find that our cell phone didn’t work. Our cell phones not working is no surprise to anyone who knows us. They never work for us.
The Eiffel Tower at night through our dinner cruise boat window. The coloured circles are part of the ship’s Christmas decorations.
We went through four on our trip.
But I digress. We found our house, but no landlady to let us in. We tried to find her house from information in the email thread, but the car’s GPS didn’t co-operate, and we ended up disturbing a nice family in a gated home, who tried to help.
Ken ended up going into the local bar where the barkeep phoned the landlady on our behalf. His French was too fast for Ken to keep up with, but the word “perdu” occurred frequently in his conversation, even though we weren’t lost. Helpless, yes, hopeless, yes again. But not lost. Our lovely landlady appeared at the pub within minutes — the bonus of a small town — and we settled in for a great week in Normandy.
Ribeauville in Alsace was a similar story. We arrived, tried to find our rental house, found what we thought was the house but no landlord. Phone didn’t work. Couldn’t make the pay phone we found (eventually) work because it didn’t take coins or credit cards– it took phone cards you had to buy at some unidentified place. Where oh where are the pay phones that take coins. We had a pocket full of coins. We were prepared. But pay phones taking coins don’t exist any more. Certainly not in the European places we visited.
We tried to buy a new SIM card for our phone at a local gift store that had a sign indicating they sold them, but the nice lady in the store wouldn’t sell us one because we didn’t live in France. She directed us to the local E LeClerc store where a really nice employee helped us through the arduous process of buying a phone in France, then helped us make the call.
Not once but twice. He helped us dial the multi-digit number, and when Ken spoke to the voice at the other end, rescued us again, when that person, not understanding either English or Ken’s pigeon French hung up on us. Our latest new best friend called back and spoke to the landlord on our behalf, set up a meeeting time and sent us happily on our way. We shopped in E LeClerc for the rest of our trip as another way to say thank you. (Cell phones by the way are responsible for both Ken’s and my passports and drivers’ licenses being on file with Italian and French government offices.)
We did have chances to be good samaritans ourselves though. As we were taking an amazing drive through the Scottish highlands with Mom and Dad (stopping at a Helmsdale restaurant either once owned by Barbara Cartland who had lived nearby, or inspired by her — decorated in lotsa pink and a few fishnet-stocking decked lamps shaped like legs — last seen in the movie The Christmas Story.) We were travelling on our favourite kind of road — the kind that is one car wide with little bumps out to the side every now and again to allow passing.
We were so high we were at the tree line, and driving beside the snow we had seen on the hills earlier from Dornoch at sea level. The views were stunning. We crested a hill, and came across a car hung up on the ice. (It’s late December at this point.) Ken backed up to the closest layby and walked over the crest of the hill and out of sight to see what he could do to help. From a distance the car had seemed really stuck, so from where we were, back in our car, we had no idea what was facing Ken and the drivers of the cars (the one that was stuck and the one that had come up behind him and was waiting to continue on his way)
Ken returned a few minutes later, shaking his head. The stranded car had hit a piece of ice about four feet square, the driver had lost control and hit the ditch. Well, it wasn’t really a ditch: the road was the same height as the fields and hillsides around it, but he was hung up. The two young men in the car behind had tried to help, and failed, young and fit as they were.
Two hill walkers had come along and added their muscle to the task at hand, but it was Ken, his brain and his Canadian winter driving experience that saved the day. As they all started pushing (by this point five men were pushing a car not much bigger than a mini — hardly room for all those hands on the back bumper), the driver did as he had been doing for the last 20 minutes (and probably half a tank of gas) and hit the gas, spinning his tires to the point of them smoking and of course going no where. Ken thumped on the boot of the car he was pushing and said (well, he probably yelled and it was probably more graphic than this) “Take your foot off the gas!!!” and proceeded to guide the others at pushing the car past the bath mat-sized piece of ice. The two young men from the car behind the stuck car said “We’d been trying to get him to do that for ages. Thanks!”
We got big waves of thanks as the two cars proceeded on their way. We laughed, kindly, as we know that in some parts of Britain drivers can go for years without encountering icy roads.
It was a lonely and desolate spot to be stuck. We were glad to help.
We were witness to a group act of kindness as well. We have a favourite dinner cruise we take when we are in Paris. We took it again this year. We were seated beside a newly engaged young couple. We had several demonstrations of the young lady’s clumsiness (for example, she jostled the table and broke some wine glasses before the ship had even left the dock.) But even so, we were surprised by the last act of clumsiness.
Dinner was finished and the servers were bringing around the coffee (well, all right, I had a double espresso). The young lady was beside me and I was suddenly aware that she was leaning further and further over — sideways, towards me, and suddenly the legs of the chair slipped out from under her and she was sent tumbling to the floor and scrambling around under the table. In retrospect, I believe she had been playing with her unfamiliar engagement ring and it had slipped off her finger and fallen to the floor, and she was bending over trying to find it when the chair slipped out from under her.
At any rate, upside down is how she finished up, and with a look of abject tragedy on her face. Her fiancé was looking around, using his cell phone as a flashlight. (the boat was dimly lit) and word buzzed around the dining area “She’s lost her ring.” Men, shrugged, but looked under their tables. Women gasped “her engagement ring?!” and men with cellphone flashlights redoubled their searching efforts. No ring had shown up by the time the dinner cruise docked, and I have always wondered if the ring was found. I’ve sent off an email to the boat,but no answer as yet.
As we were leaving the UK to come home, terrible wind storms hit the north of Europe and the UK delaying our boarding on the Queen Elizabeth. The Cunard people put about 2000 of us up in a foot ball stadium for several hours waiting the the waves to calm enough for our ship to dock and when that finally happened they had to board everyone at once instead of the usual staging they have perfected over 175 years of voyages.
As it got to our turn to go forward to the desk to get our ship ID and have our documents checked, we approached the nice man directing traffic and I smiled at him. You know me, it’s what I do. Immediately, his entire body language changed, his posture relaxed and he gave me a huge smile. We said hello and how are you doing, and he said it was a pleasure to deal with us, that not everyone had been polite.
I mean really, it’s the weather people, get real.
We have benefitted from many acts of kindness throughout our lives. I believe in karma, in what goes around comes around. Have lived long enough to see it happen. So to quote from a song from the Sound of Music (and wasn’t Lady Gaga amazing in her Oscar tribute to the movie!!) “somewhere in our youth or childhood, we must have done something good”.
