Warning: This post contains almost nothing about knitting or photography (until the very end....where I threw in some gratuitous content.)
I had one of those moments in life where there's a choice to be made fairly instantaneously and you either have to act or not.
I was driving along one of the busier streets in town on my way out of town to do an interview. It was about 1 p.m. on a day when school let out early for teachers to have meetings. As I came down the hill near the park I noticed a teen-aged boy (close in age to my own son I'd guess) riding a bike and a small, red car which had come to a sudden stop nearby. Suddenly another teen male, face covered by a bandana, lept from the back seat of the car and ran toward the kid on the bike. By now I had passed the group, but something about the look on the face of the guy on the bike kept me watching in my rear view mirror. The masked teen from the car was chasing the kid on the bike, and other boys were emerging from the vehicle's front seats.
I had gone up the hill and around a bend by this time. I could no longer see what was happening. But the look on the kid's face who had been riding the bike was telling me this wasn't a group of friends joking around.
And so the decision moment was at hand. Keep driving and pretend I hadn't seen what I'd just seen? Or do something?
As I said, it was a busy street. There were at least 3 cars behind me and I had met 3 or 4 others coming at me who surely must have seen the same thing. A UPS truck had stopped half a block away to make a delivery as well.
Even as I pondering the choice before me, I took my cell phone out and had 911 punched in.
Ultimately I decided to flip a U-turn and head back to see if the kid needed help.
I locked my doors and kept the phone in hand.
As I arrived I could see the kid who'd been on the bike standing on the lawn in the same spot. I pulled over, rolled down the window and asked if he was ok. I told him I'd seen what had happened with the group of kids in the car.
Turns out the guys who had stopped had stolen the car they were in. They took his bike as well and had started to beat him up when they noticed the UPS guy and decided to split. He was shaken, but not hurt more than a few scratches.
He was, however, very thankful I stopped. (I think he told me thank you at least a dozen times between his calls to 911.) I stayed parked there while he called police and until they arrived.
Something inside me just snapped I guess. We hear stories on the news of terrible things happening to people and how people just pass by without stopping to help. I suppose I didn't want to be one more. That kid could have been my own son. And I would like to think someone would have stopped to help him.
Now for gratuitous content related to the actual purpose of this blog . . .
Today was my weekly Sit-n-Stitch group. I worked on the mindless sock I take there so I can visit at the same time. Last week I helped my friend figure out how to join the sleeves on the Wallaby she's knitting for a grandson.
On the way home from my interview this afternoon I was driving along country roads and saw a blue heron standing on a farm bridge (the kind which farmers install to cross drainage ditches from one field to another.) It was a lovely site and would have made a beautiful photo!
