The Kindness of Strangers

Hurray! Free time!

I have meetings at the district office, so I don't have to go in until later. So, as mentioned last week, the story of my being locked out of my house.

It was cold. The first snowfall, actually. Amy had left early to go exercise before work. I was trying to hustle along as the week had been leaving piles of work for me to sort through. I was doing well, getting out of the house a good ten or fifteen minutes earlier than usual. As I closed the door, I remember thinking that I had better close it tightly because it sometimes doesn't want to latch. I yanked quite hard. Satisfied with my secure home, I began down the steps toward the garage, feeling my pockets as I went. As I patted each leg, the jingle and jangle that I have become accustomed to was not to be heard.

"Oh, no."

I leapt back to the door to see if I had, maybe, not secured it as well as I had hoped--no luck. It was not yet 7:00, and nearly every house was still dark. As I looked up and down the street, wondering who to wake up, I saw a man come out of his house and begin scraping his windshield.

"Hurray, hurrah!"

I shuffled over there, but he had made it back inside his house before I got there. I had seen him many times before, but never talked to or introduced myself to him. So I stood, knock, knock, knockin' on Tahim's door. He opened and said, "Good morning."

"Hi," I said. "We've not met. I'm Cale, and I locked myself out of my house."

He invited me in and gave me his cell phone so I could call my wife. She didn't answer. She was probably just ending her routine or maybe showering off. Either way, her voice mail was not a welcome message.

"Is she going to call back?" Tahim asked.

"She will after a bit, but it's cool. She'll call my..." I remembered that my phone was in my house with keys. "Dang it."

"Just keep mine, then."

I had never thought of cell phones in this way. You can let somebody have it for a while and it will be useful wherever they go. But I instantly thought of people abusing the privilege. The thought had either never occurred to Tahim, or it didn't bother him. He then told me that he needed to take his daughter to school, and that I should make myself comfortable. So I sat in his house for a good twenty minutes with nobody else there--it's a weird thing to do if you've never been given the chance.

At this point, when I was telling my students, some of them asked if I snooped around or mentioned how easily I could have stolen something...ugh. Brilliant idea. I could take his stuff and sit outside my house where I wouldn't be able to stash the stuff.

Anyhow, he came back and we got to talking about religion and how people ruin religion's name by taking it in the wrong direction and turning it into something it's not supposed to be. We spent a good half hour talking before my wife made it home.

Despite taking 40 minutes to drive to school and missing my first class, my day was great because I knew that humanity was alive across the street.

He's totally getting special Christmas cookies this year.