Interconnections

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

Rosie and I were having an uneventful ride home from Kansas City yesterday when a couple of events happened in quick succession near Seymour on Highway 60, a major and very busy four-lane highway that stretches across southern Missouri.  There are two stoplights, about a mile apart, along the highway at Seymour.    That happens to be Amish country, and it is not unusual to see Amish buggies being pulled by large Percheron horses along the highway's right-of-way.  It's not the safest of circumstances for anyone, but it is a place where two cultures merge, and everyone tries to be extra careful and respectful.

As I was driving along between the stoplights, I passed two young Amish boys around the age of twelve or so who were riding bareback on pair of large black horses, galloping down the right of way, going east like Rosie and me.   The Amish who travel the roadways in their carriages, sometimes with children sitting in the back facing the on-coming traffic, always appear dour and serious, but these lads had broad smiles and may have even been laughing, no doubt delighted that church was over for the morning and they were flush with exuberance for the day awaiting them.

I'm fairly certain that their names were Tom and Huck.

They were in a grand mood, and so were their horses.  I had been in a bored funk from driving several hours, but the enthusiasm radiating from those two youngsters brightened my mood considerably, and, I suspect, uplifted many of the others who drove past them on that glorious afternoon.

I stopped at the next light to fill my little Kia with gas and to take Rosie out for her constitutional.  After Rosie had done her business, I put her back in the car and headed into the Casey's to do mine.  As I got close to the door, a young man exiting the store pushed the door open, and then recognizing a grandpa when he saw one, held the door open for me.  But before I could reach the door and thank him for his courtesy, he stared toward the gas pumps and got an odd look on his face.  I followed his glance and noticed a large woman, who was struggling to walk with a cane in the headwind.  She was also heading for the door but a few feet further out than myself.

The woman was progressing slowly against the wind and toward the door.  The guy holding the door open looked perplexed as he debated how to handle the two old people heading his way from different directions.  He was in the center and obviously going to be in the way of someone.  But I was still feeling light-hearted from seeing the two Amish boys as they reminded the world of what joy was all about, and I reached out and grabbed the door from the impromptu doorman and told him that I would handle it.

The woman smiled at both of us as she reached the curb, and the other guy stepped out of the way and went to his car.  "Thank you," she said, standing at the curb but making no effort to step up onto it.  "Can I help you?"  I asked, though I was not sure of what I could do to help.  "No," she replied, "I just need to stand until the wobblies go away."   I have a history of falling and understood exactly what she was feeling.  

The woman regained her balance and gingerly put her right foot onto the 6-inch curb, and then slowly followed with her left.   But as he was trying to defeat the wobblies from atop the curb, she swayed, exactly the way I had swayed the previous week on the church steps at a family reunion and almost tumbled into oblivion.  As she was swaying she began leaning backward.  I was in the right place at the right time, and my right hand instinctively shot out and grasped her left hand and she regained her stability.

"Thank you," she said, as we were entering the store.  "I'm fifty years old and I'm beginning to lose it."

"I'm seventy-seven today," I told her, "and I've already lost it several times.  But we bounce back, don't we?"

The point of this tale is "interconnectedness."  While you may not believe in some magical being who sits on a cloud all day smoking a hookah pipe as She pulls the puppet strings of more than eight billion individual people on Planet Earth, I believe it is evident that all of our lives impact the lives of others and that we are connected as a species and as a life force.  We are ripples in a pond, or an ocean, threads in a fabric.  Each of us touches more lives in more ways than we can possibly imagine.

Two young Amish boys, Tom and Huck, saved a woman from grievous bodily harm yesterday, and neither she nor them have a clue as to how they connected.  And today that same woman is out in the world, upright and mobile, and through happenstance, or design, or example, has already done something that will impact the lives of others, and they, in turn, will impact still more.

Enjoy the world around you, and share it with others.