Every now and then, I can look at my daughter Lizzi and say, “It’s amazing how far we’ve come.”
And almost immediately, one of us will say:
“BAM.”
We both know exactly what that means.
Back in 2014, we were driving home after spending Thanksgiving in Florida with my Aunt Margie. Rather than fight the holiday traffic on the interstate, we decided to take some back roads through Georgia and enjoy a more scenic drive.
At some point, we realized we were near a little town north of I-20 where there were supposed to be Christmas decorations going up. We had been through that area years earlier when Lizzi was still a little girl, and I started talking with her about that trip.
That earlier day had not exactly been one of our finer father-daughter moments. Lizzi had been difficult. I had probably been frustrated. But by 2014, things between us were very different. She was older, I was older, and we had developed a relationship that I treasured.
So as we drove along that Georgia back road, I looked back at her and said, “It’s amazing how far we’ve come.”
BAM.
The entire car shook.
Something had slammed into us hard enough that I immediately knew something was badly wrong. I pulled off the road, and when we got out, the side of the car was torn up. There was water everywhere.
My first thought was that we had blown the radiator. Then I noticed the hair.
A little farther down the road, in the ditch, was a young deer. It wasn’t quite a fawn anymore, but it wasn’t fully grown either. Apparently, it had stuck its head out into the roadway at exactly the wrong moment. And suddenly our leisurely drive home had become a much bigger problem.
We were somewhere on a rural Georgia road, the car looked badly damaged, and we weren’t sure whether it was safe to drive. My wife at the time got on the phone with AAA to arrange for a tow truck while I tried to figure out what we were going to do next.
Then a man showed up. I don’t remember his name. I’m not sure I ever knew it. He simply saw us stranded beside the road and stopped to ask whether we needed help.
He took a look at the car and quickly figured out something I hadn’t. The radiator hadn’t exploded at all. The deer had damaged the windshield-washer assembly, which explained all the water. The body damage looked terrible, but mechanically the car was apparently still drivable.
He spent some time working on it, tying things down and securing the damaged section well enough that it wouldn’t be flapping around while we drove.
Then he told us that he thought we could make it home.
“Just don’t drive too fast.”
So we canceled the tow truck.
We stayed off the interstate, drove slowly, and eventually made it all the way home. The next day, I could deal with body shops, insurance and everything else that came with hitting a deer. But that night, what mattered was getting my family home. And some man who didn’t know us had made that possible.
I still know approximately where it happened. I marked the spot on a map, and even today I can pull it up and look at that stretch of road. I think I may even know which nearby house the man came from.
But I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know what he did for a living. I don’t know what kind of person he was the other 364 days of the year. I don’t even know whether he was a Christian. I only know what he did that night.
He saw a family stranded beside the road and stopped.
There wasn’t anything in it for him. Nobody had asked him to come. Nobody was going to reward him. He simply saw people who needed help, realized that he could provide it, and decided that for a little while our problem was going to become his problem too.
It’s been almost twelve years, and I’m still telling his story.
That’s something worth remembering when the news makes it seem as though people are selfish, angry and unwilling to care about anyone but themselves. Sometimes we start believing the worst about humanity because the worst of humanity is usually what gets our attention.
But there are still people who stop. There are still people who see somebody in trouble and ask, “Y’all need some help?” And sometimes restoring someone’s faith in people doesn’t require doing anything heroic. Sometimes you just have to notice that they’re stuck on the side of the road. And stop.
As for Lizzi and me, every once in a while I’ll still tell her:
“It’s amazing how far we’ve come.”
“BAM.”
