Tuesday morning I left to go to an eye appointment and inadvertently created a social experiment. On the way there, I noticed my truck seemed “off” but couldn’t really pinpoint why I thought something was wrong. As I pulled into the parking lot I realized it was the transmission; it wasn’t wanting to shift.
I went ahead and parked and went into my appointment. When I came back out my truck appeared to be fine. I made it out of the parking lot and had just gone through the 4-way stop sign at Commercial Dr & Heights Drive when my truck not only refused to shift, it refused to go forward at all!
I was now in the middle of the road. I put the truck in park and tried shifting into different gears, and really tried everything I could think of. However, she was done! I called my husband who said he was on his way (coming from post though so it would be 20-30 minutes).
As I sat there with my flashers on I watched vehicle after vehicle pass by, not once stopping to ask if I needed help. I even had cars come up behind me and honk. All I could think is if I could move, don’t you think I would move!? It’s not like I am hanging out in the middle of the road because I want to piss you off!
As I continued to wait for my knight in shining armor, I realized I had to do something. I was on a slight incline and decided to put the truck in neutral and see if I could get it to roll back into the right turn lane.
It was a success. About 10 minutes later my husband showed up and the one and only person to stop (thank you kind stranger) did so to ask if we needed help. He helped us push the truck backward out of the turn lane and onto Heights Dr (it’s more of a residential road and enough room for cars to park on the side).
We waited another 1.5 hours for a tow truck to arrive. Guess how many more people stopped to ask us if we needed help (we did have our flashers on and were right before a 4 way stop)? ZERO. We had a bunch of people stare, but no one ever stopped. So much for good deeds.
You can read the rest of the almost 3-hour ordeal in the Harker Heights Evening Star.
It was disheartening to think that very few people stop to help others anymore. So my challenge to all of you is to help someone or do a good deed at least once a day for an entire week.
Have you done a good deed today? Helped a complete stranger out? I want to know! Leave a comment below and tell me about it!
P.S. Eventually the transmission went out for good and we got it replaced.
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