100 Days, 100 Ties

I hereby give the proper advanced notice that this post will be forever pigeon-holed in the STMOH (Schlocky Tooting Mine Own Horn) section of the interwebs. However, the story ends so sweetly and serendipitously that I can’t help but relate it.

Thursday evening I walked to my car in the parking garage. It wasn’t as miserably cold as it has been since Friday, but it was getting there. I noticed a very flat tire on a little Mazda a few cars away. Not just low flat–rims hitting the concrete flat.

Anyway, what to do? I tore out a piece of paper to write a note: “Your left rear tire is very flat.” This would likely have been obvious, as the owner would have probably seen it (it was that flat). As I had to deal with a nail-in-the-tire this week on the family truckster, I bought a mini air compressor from Target, which pumped my tire enough so that I could drive it to Doc Able’s on Chicago Avenue. So, I pondered leaving the compressor next to the car with a more detailed note on my business card.

It took a couple minutes of pondering. The YES DO IT factor was very strong, as I put a story into my head that this person (for no reason I pegged the owner as female) had a family to get back to, and, with the weather as it was, could really use a 10-minute solution rather than one that would take over an hour (not to mention cost money). Somehow, I thought that the happiest person in the world would be this girl’s father, who would HATE not being there for his daughter; I hoped that someone, someday, somewhere would do a similar nice thing for Julia. I figured there would be about a 15% chance that the person would keep it…maybe even less than that.

The next morning, I saw the car again. The tire was fat, happy and full of good ol’ air. At the office, lying against my office door, in a plastic bag? The air compressor. No note, but it made me happy. After lunch, Elaine told me someone from one of the offices in our building had dropped by, saying something about a flat tire. I went up to introduce myself to Coleen (two l’s?), who was very gracious in thanking me, marveling at the amount of faith I must have had that I would have gotten it back. Faith schmaith, I just wanted to help. But then she said it had been a tough month; her father had passed away just two weeks prior. I felt a wave of paternal brotherhood (does that make sense) pass through me, quite rapidly, and then I felt myself getting emotional, never ever wanting Julia to reach the moment in her life that her Daddy is gone. I hope that Coleen knows that her Daddy told me to leave the compressor, and that he and I and all the other Daddies out there (in this world and the next) remain vigilant, and will make sure that daughters are taken care of when life’s mini-crises come up.

My Tie du Jour is quite simple, a solid blue from the Tongue Tied collection from Tom McClellon. The colorful plaid shirt is really the star in this ensemble.

I’m spent from that story. Take the time to do nice things. Thanks for doing a nice thing for me and reading my blog…Brooke

This entry was posted on January 22, 2011 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Tie du Jour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.