Pay it Forward

Every once in a while a person gets a chance to do someone else a favor, or step up when something needs doing and just get it done. This, normally, makes the person feel good, like they've contributed to the common good, or at least helped some individual when they really needed it.

And sometimes it's just insane.

Last week we had this crazy ice storm in the Berkshires. Thursday night the power went out and my wife and I lay in bed all night listening to tree's coming down around the neighborhood. We got up in the morning and our entire world was covered in an inch of ice. Tree's were down everywhere, the roads were impassable, and nothing was moving. You could still hear the sound, like firecrackers, of tree's falling every minute or two. Fortunately none of the tree's had fallen on our house, but, a couple of 60 foot Maples were, basically, shredded and there was an Ash laying across one end of the driveway. We took some pictures, and felt like our world had changed all of a sudden.

A bit later, when the roads had been cleared somewhat, I took a ride to the store to get some water. No electricity means no pump, which means no water, when you live in the Hilltowns. I had just walked into the store when Jill, who works there, said "There's someone at the Fire Station who needs a ride to the Hospital!" She was sounding a little excited so I assumed it was at least a semi-emergency. As a former EMT with the local Fire Department I figured that an ambulance wasn't available, and the rest of the Department was out taking care of business somewhere else in town, and that someone needed to step up and help out. I didn't think about it for a second...I just said, "I'll take them."

So I went to the Fire Department. I should have known something was up when I got there and found the Fire Chief and a couple of Cops standing around in the office "Chewing the Fat", but, I'd volunteered and here I was. So I said to the Chief, "You got somebody here that needs to go to the Hospital?" He said, "Yeah, they're in the meeting room. You going to give them a ride?"
I said "Once a volunteer...yknow?"

I went to the meeting room to see what was up. I found three women in their early 40's and a young man of about 20. The women looked fairly normal, he was tattooed up and pierced in 4-5 places, sort of Goth looking, dressed all in black. I asked if they were needing a ride to the Hospital, and they were ready to go. On the way out the door the Chief was nice enough to tell me that Rt 143 was open all the way to Williamsburg, and say "Thanks" with kind of an odd grin on his face.

I started getting the feeling that this was going to be a wierd trip when we got to my car. I drive one of these "cross-over" vehicles, kind of a large station wagon, not an SUV and not just a car. It has seating for 6, but the last row isn't exactly easy to get into, and when my passengers saw it they started to argue about who would sit in back, because They All Had Back Problems!! Even the 20 something didn't feel like he could get back there! I started thinking "What in the Hell have you gotten into here."

I won't kill you with all the details but suffice it to say that these people were completely incapable of thinking there way through any situation. There are just people in the world who depend on someone else to figure out their day for them, and these four people are part of that group. This was their predicament:

One of them...I never found out who, but I think it was the young man...had an appointment in Northampton. It was my impression when I first met them that at least one of them lived in my town...this was not the case. These people live in Pittsfield. Though the appointment was for just one of them all four had to go. My guess is because it was the only thing that any of them had to do for the day. It was entertainment!! So they got in their car and tried to drive to Northampton. They got as far as Rt 9 in Dalton and found that the road was closed due to the ice storm the night before. Here's where the inability to think started showing up. Instead of canceling the trip, or even driving around Pittsfield to the Mass Pike, they decided that the thing to do was to drive up into the Hilltowns and get to Northampton that way. They turned a 20 mile trip up Rt 9, into a 30 mile trip on backroads through the Berkshires that had just endured the worst ice storm in 30 years the night before.

The road they took was described to me later in the day as a place where "a snake would have broke his back trying to get through the downed trees." There were power lines down everywhere, trees laying across the road, but our intrepid travelers didn't change their minds. With that bulldog tenacity that infects the unthinking in the world they just kept plowing ahead. They finally reached a point where they could go no further. There was a tree all the way across the road an it was impassable. What to do? They all got out and tried to move the tree. When that didn't work they decided that they would simply drive over it. So they all hopped in, put the car in gear, and hoped for the best. Things, as you can imagine, didn't work out so well. They punctured a tire and got the car stuck on the tree.

What to do now? Well, you know, when you can't figure out that you shouldn't drive your car over a tree that you can't move, you probably can't figure out what to do next either. So they sat there, and waited till someone came along to help. And they sat there quite a while, because as I said earlier, nothing was moving in town. Eventually, a police car showed up and gave them a ride to the Fire Station, which is where I came in.

I drove these people to Northampton. They were not going to the Hospital but to some clinic downtown. What kind of clinic it was I don't know and frankly, it's none of my business. I spent 30 minutes or so with these people and I learned alot. There are just some people in the world who require more help than the rest of us. Rather than have someone wait in the town where there car was abandoned (the police were not having it towed on their promise to have someone from Pittsfield come and fix their flat) all four of them were going to Northampton, so that when their friend came to fix the flat he would have to drive all the way to Northampton, then drive them back to the Hilltowns, so they could get the car. There were four of these people and in the course of that morning they had all agreed to make the same bad decisions one after another. No dissent. And it all seemed perfectly natural to them. They live their lives in chaos, and this was just another one of those days.

I don't mean to insult these people. They're just folks who were never taught any critical thinking skills. They're lives are difficult and they get through the day as best as they can.

I have to admit that I was having a hard time keeping a straight face after a while. When we got to the clinic the woman sitting next to me tried to give me money for gas, and I just said to her "Pay it forward" She hadn't seen the movie, or heard the phrase. She gave me a quizical look, and I said "I've done you a favor today. Someday you'll get a chance to do a favor for someone you don't know. Do it for them, and we'll be even." She seemed stunned at that. Maybe, in her world, people don't do favors for people if they don't know them. I suppose that's true for a lot of people.

Hopefully she'll start something new.