Remembering the Good In People

One of the things about doing news in radio is it's the antithesis of the a "9 to 5" job. Often that means being the last one out at the end of the night.

Tonight was one of those nights. Now normally getting out late doesn't matter to me since I am such a night owl. However, today was complicated by the fact that when I went to my car at 12:30 at night, my battery didn't start.

Now to be fair it's really my fault, I know my battery is bad and I should have known with the nights low getting into the teens the odds of my battery starting weren't going to be great. Regardless, my lone car was stranded in the parking lot at midnight with me next to it.

Being as resourceful as I am the first thing I did was head over across the plaza where the our building is and as a local Applebee's for help. The restaurant was closed, but I knocked and one of the employees there said as soon as he got out he would drive over and give me a jump. Well, as nice as it was of him to offer, I wish he would have given me a ETA since I stood there for a good 15-20 minutes (which feels a whole lot longer in freezing temps) thinking that if he could have forgotten about me, and if so I needed to flag down one of the few cars leaving or else I would be stuck there all night!

I got out onto the main road of the plaza where our building is located and tried to flag someone down, the problem of course being it's almost 1 am and I am some guy waiving my hand at cars as they pass, needless to say it didn't look good for me.

Things were looking grim (even a passing taxi cab ignored me) when I see a car that just passed turn around and drive back to me. Luckily for me two guys who seemed about my age (twenties) pulled up and asked if I needed any help. I was grateful and was able to get a jump from them.

The story could end there, however I have to say their selfless action really got me thinking. Here are two young guys, driving (likely home) late at night  and they see some guy standing by a parking lot. They already were past me and could have easily kept going (like most people) and not given it a second thought, instead they turned around to offer a hand.Even getting out of their car into the frigid night to make sure my car started.

I don't know if there's any moral in all this, however what I took away from the entire thing is this, "never lose faith in human kindness".

It's easy to grow jaded and cynical about society but I was reminded of the great Conan O'Brien who made one of the most profoundly ernest speeches on the last episode of the Tonight Show.

And all I ask is one thing...and this is...I'm asking this particularly of young people that watch...please do not be cynical.
I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality.
It doesn't lead anywhere.
Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get.

To the two guys who helped me, and I am sorry I didn't get your name, I want to say thank you. Hopefully our future paths will meet and I can repay you for your help. In the meantime all I can say is hopefully karma repays you for your positive action tenfold (at the very least if you read this get in touch with me and I'll by you two a drink). What it has taught me is to pass that same goodwill forward, and hopefully more people will consider simply stopping and asking a person who's car by the side of the road, or looks upset, or whatever, "is there anything I can do to help?"

Maybe I won't be able to but I think I owe it to remember people are still by nature good and if you want to be proud of mankind, you have to make the first step yourself.

And seriously, if you read this I'm buying you guys a round.