The Kindness of Strangers
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Sitting on the beach this afternoon an incident popped into my mind from over three decades ago. Why I thought of this I don’t know, but here is what happened.
I was in Australia. I spent a year traveling around the country, mainly hitchhiking. I was somewhere south of Sidney, heading south. It was a baking hot day and I had just had my hair cut. Why is that relevant you might ask? Well, my hair had been long and covering my neck. Now there was no cover over my neck and I was not clever enough to realize that standing in the sun for hours, it took a long time to get a ride from wherever I was (the middle of nowhere it appeared), with skin exposed to the sun that had been protected for months was asking for trouble. Sure enough a few days later a scab formed over the back of my neck and I feel that I can be thankful that nothing else has developed from that over exposure.
Anyway, so I was standing by the road somewhere south of Sidney. There was just the main road, a turn off (down which my last ride had turned), and a lot of Australian bush. It was hot and no one was stopping to pick me up. After a very long wait a car pulled over and I thought that I had my ride. A man gets out, walks round to the back of his car, opens up the rear hatch, fumbles around and pulls something out. He walks over to me with a cold can of something. I can’t remember what it was, apart from it being very welcome!
He told me to put a hat on and watch the sun and then went on his way.
I have no idea who he was or where he was going, but I appreciated his kindness in just being willing to stop to give me a drink…and a bit of common sense!