Years ago, I was driving down US 23 in Michigan near Ann Arbor when up ahead a car accident occurred. When I neared the accident I pulled over and as I was pulling over I noticed that the gentleman in the accident was already out of the car, sitting on the ground near his driver side rear tire with his head on his palms. His head was bleeding and he was shaking. When he pulled his head up from his palms I immediately thought, "holy shit, that's Dave".
Dave worked for the same restaurant group that I did and was childhood friends with one of my closest friends.
"Dave are you alright?"
"Steve?" My being there confused him but he replied, "Yeah, I'm fine but Julie.... Julie is pregnant."
Daves wife was in the passenger seat, sitting still not wanting to move without the say so of the paramedics. I spoke to Julie and reassured her that Dave was alright, just a couple of scratches and that she too was likely fine. I then relayed to Dave that Julie was fine and that the ambulance would arrive shortly and although they were both likely fine, they would need to go to the hospital. Dave understood but then looked at me and said, "what about the dogs."
Their two Golden Retrievers were in the back seat of the car and amazingly, given the scope of the accident, they seemed fine. I told Dave not to worry, that I would take care of the dogs. I walked to my car and got the strap off of my computer bag and strapped it to the collar of the first dog and walked her to my car. She got in without a problem.
By now traffic was moving pretty quickly again. When I was attempting to get the dogs I tried to enlist the help of one of the policeman that was there. He refused to go near the dogs and was extremely rude about it. There was a fireman nearby that noticed and helped to guard the door while I opened it. But despite his best efforts, when the door opened to get the second dog, it darted past us and almost ran straight in to oncoming traffic.
Julie, now on a stretcher saw this and screamed "NOOOOO".
Just before the dog made it past the firetruck and into the oncoming cars, a fireman dove a la Bobby Or or Pete Rose and wrapped his arms around the dog.
There is no doubt that he saved that dogs life. I'm sure I'm not conveying how amazing it was to witness. But keep in mind that only a few moments prior a policeman refused to even go near that dog and here was a fireman diving, sprawled out and tackling it in order to save it's life.
"That was amazing," is all I could come up with. And it was.
I took the dogs to the vet and they were fine. Dave and Julie were fine too, just a bit cut up and bruised. Their baby was also healthy and fine. A few weeks later I got a nice postcard from Dave and Julie and their dogs thanking me.
There haven't been a lot of times when I felt like fate wanted me somewhere but that was one of them.
I try to always stop when I can and help when people need it. It really does come back in spades.
When is a time you've spontaneously been called to action?
About three weeks ago, my wife, my daughter and I were heading to a nearby coffee shop/bookstore. I was driving. As we headed over an overpass spanning a stretch of the interstate, I saw a guy climbing the railing, clearly getting ready to jump. The drop is, I dunno, 35 feet, maybe? So it's unclear as to whether he would have died. Then again, it was just before rush hour, traffic was going at a pretty good clip, so he very well could have hit a car, and a lot of people could have been very hurt. Anyhow, as soon as I saw this, I yelled "oh shit," put the car into park without giving any warning to my wife or the drivers behind me, jumped out of the car and... ambled over to the guy, who had one leg over the rail. You don't really want to run towards a guy in that position.
Asked him how he was doing, if he needed any help. He's clearly homeless, smells like booze, crying. Starts talking about how he's fucked his life up, how nobody cares about him, how he just wants to die. I try telling him how I care about him at that moment, he just keeps going on about how I don't even know him. Gets the other leg over the rail, I tell him to look at me, which thankfully he does. Gives me some time and his attention span, I start talking about how we all kind of stumble through life, how all of us are fuckups. He's not really buying it, but he's not jumping yet, so that's okay. I don't want him to get any further, but I also don't want to try and grab him by myself and get pulled over the side or something. What the hell are you supposed to say to get somebody to not jump?
Meanwhile, a bus driver had pulled over across the street and had clearly called 911 on his cell. I was surreptitiously motioning for him to come over, and when he got of the phone, he came up behind the guy.
Traffic is stopped on I-5, which is good, but people are starting to gawk, which is bad. A police car is pulled up in front of traffic, and officer helpful gets on that big, blaring loudspeaker and squawks something completely incomprehensible at us. Sure sounds threatening though, thanks. At this point, the guy on the railing starts shifting his weight. So without really giving any warning, and in blessed conjunction with bus driver, I grab one arm, he grabs another, I say something trite like "I'm just gonna help you back over, okay?" and we drag him back to the sidewalk. He immediately starts screaming and crying "no no no" and this sheriff, a lady, swoops out of nowhere, goes, "good, now get him on the ground," kicks the back of his knees out and presses him face first into the ground, where's he's handcuffed.
You can imagine how off-putting this was to me, who just spouted all this jive about how I cared about him and that he was going to be okay. The best I could do was rub his back as he was surrounded by law enforcement. I looked around and realized we were ringed by cop cars. Crazy.
You know what the hell of it is? I don't really feel good about any of it. This guy, he was in bad shape, physically and emotionally and financially. And he was miserable after we pulled him back over. Who's to say I didn't doom him to another few days, weeks, months or years of abject misery? As a homeless guy, he has precious few choices that he can make for himself. Maybe he'd decided that enough was enough, and this was his final act of empowerment. And then some bougey family guy swoops out of nowhere acting like a goddamn hero and drags him away from his last bid at freedom from misery. Family guy gets to go home and feel Important, but this guy has to spend the night in inpatient, then go back onto the streets and back to hard living and desperate choices. Stop a guy from killing himself, but then take no ownership in the betterment of his life after that. Seems pretty crass to me .How am I supposed to feel about this? I certainly don't feel like I did something great.
My wife tells me that the way I can think about it is that even if he did truly want to die, and even if that would have saved him, he could easily have taken out some innocent driver in the process, maybe some passengers. So there's that, I guess.
posted 4061 days ago