A Helping Hand
A while ago, my wife and I were sitting at home watching the stormy weather through our veranda windows. The rain was heavy and the lightning spectacular. The lightning would light up the entire neighbourhood and it was almost as bright as daytime.
During a lull in the storm we heard the sound of a car breaking and screeching to a halt before we heard a sound of crunching plastic. Victoria, my wife was worried, what if they were lying there in the rain, surely they would suffer from hypothermia, or what if they had injured themselves and needed attention. Looking around we saw nothing, although we knew that whoever it was should be close. A bolt of lightning lit up the neighbourhood again and Victoria noticed a vehicle along the side of the road, about a hundred metres away. She pointed it out and with the next flash we were able to make out the profile of a person. I assured Victoria that the occupants had to be all right, as they were walking around the vehicle. I said that they were probably under the influence of alcohol and it would serve them right for drinking and driving. Victoria the perpetual optimist eventually convinced me that it was a poor old lady who had not seen where she was going and turned too sharp. So we pulled our vehicle out the garage and went to the assistance of the ‘little old’ lady.
When we arrived we were surprised to see not an old lady but a woman of about early thirties, well dressed and as I suspected was slightly inebriated, yet still in full control of her vices. She seemed pleased to see that she had help but was slightly anxious about something. Her vehicle was still driveable and it appeared as though only the fender was slightly smashed, but her vehicle was lodged upon a rock. The sump was not ruptured either, but she was unable to get moving. We tried in vane to remove the vehicle, but all we succeeded in doing was getting full of mud and wetter. The rain continued to pour down and slowly we ran out of options. Realising that we were fighting a loosing battle we suggested that she stay at our place for the night and in the daylight we could tackle the recovery of the vehicle, after all it was safely off the road and we figured that no-one else would move it either.