I have a friend, a retired Lehigh professor, who is 99.9 years old. :-) I drove him to a lunch he attends on Friday with plans to run errands with him a variety of places today. With the dangerously cold weather predicted, I determined it was better to take him following the lunch.
I didn't want him to miss his hundredth birthday on MY watch. :-)
The net result was a six and a half hour "event" in very cold (but not yet deadly cold) weather.
He normally can do most of the work of moving himself from his wheelchair to the passenger seat of my car or vice versa but, by our last stop, he was too weak to stand up high enough to swing his butt into the car and he was really starting to feel the cold.
He prefers making the transfer with as little help from me as necessary but, as the situation was deteriorating, I was prepared to inexpertly use what little brute force I have to expedite the move. A young man (he looked either Asian or Filipino) saw the situation and said, "Can I help?"
Not sure that the professor would want the help of a stranger, I nonetheless gratefully accepted the offer.
As the professor stood up about half as far as he needed to get, the young man used one hand to support the armpit and firmly grabbed back of the professor's pants and used the "seat" that resulting to hoist him up far enough to swing into the vehicle.
I thanked him profusely (and the professor, who leans very skeptical, surprised me with a "God bless you," such was his apparent relief at getting out of the cold) and said, "You've done this before, haven't you?"
He smiled and said, "I'm a nurse."
It says in the New Testament that one should practice hospitality with strangers because in so doing, some have - unknown to them - "entertained angels."
I think this guy was one of them.
I didn't want him to miss his hundredth birthday on MY watch. :-)
The net result was a six and a half hour "event" in very cold (but not yet deadly cold) weather.
He normally can do most of the work of moving himself from his wheelchair to the passenger seat of my car or vice versa but, by our last stop, he was too weak to stand up high enough to swing his butt into the car and he was really starting to feel the cold.
He prefers making the transfer with as little help from me as necessary but, as the situation was deteriorating, I was prepared to inexpertly use what little brute force I have to expedite the move. A young man (he looked either Asian or Filipino) saw the situation and said, "Can I help?"
Not sure that the professor would want the help of a stranger, I nonetheless gratefully accepted the offer.
As the professor stood up about half as far as he needed to get, the young man used one hand to support the armpit and firmly grabbed back of the professor's pants and used the "seat" that resulting to hoist him up far enough to swing into the vehicle.
I thanked him profusely (and the professor, who leans very skeptical, surprised me with a "God bless you," such was his apparent relief at getting out of the cold) and said, "You've done this before, haven't you?"
He smiled and said, "I'm a nurse."
It says in the New Testament that one should practice hospitality with strangers because in so doing, some have - unknown to them - "entertained angels."
I think this guy was one of them.
1 comment:
Nice story Bill.
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