I like to think of myself as someone who is fairly self sufficient and who manages to do things on her own, but every now and then, I need help. I mean sure, I solicit your opinion and comments on a number of things but in person I think I’m fairly independent.

I don’t have a car, so I’m used to getting around town by bus if I can’t have access to the family car, something that’s been trickier since we’re down to one car. Since most of my friends have cars, I have to admit that when they are involved in my plans they usually very graciously insist on driving me so I don’t usually have to resort to taking the bus. In my family we can’t believe how quickly we got used to having two cars, especially since we had only been a two-car family for two years.

But that’s the thing with conveniences I guess.

This past week there were two situations where I needed rescuing, and I was once again grateful to have friends, especially Rich and Ves who really are too good to me.

I had errands to run after work, and both errands were located some distance from each other and both had to be accomplished by 8pm. Since I knew I’d be taking the bus to both places, and since I had no idea how to get to the first place (a new area from the point of view of bus service), I planned my trip with the trip planner available with the local bus service. Well I ended up arriving at the first leg of my stop late and the connecting bus had left. I checked to see when the next bus would be coming and it turned out that the bus I had missed was the last bus. I called the bus service to see if there was an alternate route but there wasn’t, or if there was, the operator wasn’t exactly sure how to get me there. When he started asking me if I knew my east from west, I knew this would be tricky. I let him finish telling me to walk in a certain direction, making sure to have the sun at my back, and then I decided to go home. I don’t possess a good sense of direction, and for bus directions there seemed to be an awful lot of walking involved and I was afraid of getting lost.

My plan by heading home was that I’d be able to grab the car and perhaps run both errands far more efficiently. Except, my mom was working until 9pm, so she had the car. I thought I could “borrow” the car and return to pick her up, but my father had errands of his own to run so he had already picked up the car from her work and done the exact thing I was planning. So I decided then to take the bus to the second place I had to go, because it was much easier to get to. I asked the bus driver of the bus I got on whether he went to the place I was going. He said yes. Twenty minutes later he was heading in the wrong direction so I asked him again and he very apologetically told me that he made a mistake and he actually didn’t go there. He drove me somewhere and told me to take another bus. This was also the wrong bus, but I figured that out before getting on it. So, I called the bus service again and they told me that the next bus that would take me where I was going would come in twenty minutes. I wouldn’t make it to my second place on time.

So, I called Rich, and he left Ves and their boy and came to pick me up and drive me to do my errands. Though he drove me to both places, we didn’t make it to one place on time, but we got the first really-hard-to-get-to-by-bus errand out of the way and that was such a huge help.

Four days later, on my way to Rich and Ves’s house, when the car started to overheat and the (engine?) temperature gauge was all the way on the right hand side, reading a temperature of 125 degrees Celsius, and my “check coolant” light came on, who did I call after driving into a mall parking lot? And who came right away to drive me to safety? Who immediately said her husband would follow me home when I was leaving to make sure I got home ok? Who drove me back to my car and stood in the parking lot while I drove around to see if the car would begin to overheat again? Who called me on the way home to make sure I’d make it home safely?

And how wonderful do I feel knowing that if I called at 3 in the morning, or during their dinner, or at some other supremely inconvenient time, Ves and Rich would come to my rescue?

Really wonderful.

Filed under: Friends by jummy