The Things We Give Up for Food

Two weeks ago I was driving down a side street and saw something strange. A man in a powered wheelchair was sitting at the end of his driveway rocking back and forth. The first moment I saw him, I assumed that he was there on purpose, but I slowed down to see what was happening. I looked at his surroundings: there was a trash can lying in the street directly in front of him, his wheelchair was in a sand-filled rut that was the meeting point between his pitched driveway and the tapered street, and he looked sweaty and frustrated. I immediately changed my assumption: he must be stuck.
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By the time I came to this realization, I had passed his street and was on a median-divided thoroughfare. Turning around would be hard, time-consuming, and my stomach was growling for food. I pulled into the parking lot of the gyro restaurant and thought for a moment. Putting that old man in a wheelchair out of my mind would take no time at all, and I would probably never remember that moment. But something bothered me about this thought: what is the right thing to do?
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All of this thought had allowed me enough time to be in the restaurant already, ordering a gyro and a sweet Greek salad with kalamata olives in it, but for some reason I was still sitting in my truck. Thinking. I began driving back to the scene that I really could not forget. I pulled up and spoke, “Do you need any help, sir?”
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“Yes, I am stuck. Can you push me?”
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I parked, got out and pushed the man out of the rut he had found himself in and offered additional help. “You can put that trash can up by the house for me, thank you,” he replied. That ‘thank you’ was, in fact, one of the most memorable things I have ever heard. Doing the right thing (even if it is a little inconvenient) can sometimes change insignificant situations into momentous memories.