pay it forward
so went to ball today at church, played a few games, then played like a dallas maverick out there going 0-7 with 2 turnovers and decided to call it quits for the day. get in my car and put the pedal to the metal to the jack-in-the-box drive-thru. sitting in the drivethru, salivating at all the scrumptious overpriced items on the menu, when all of a sudden, i hear a huge screech. then another. and another.

okay honest moment. i was a tiny bit scared. so first thing i did was lock my car door. but then the screeching stopped. whew.

then it starts again. SCREECH! SCREECH! SCREECH!

i quickly pull up to the mic and order some food, but on my way to the pickup window, i see where all the fuss is coming from.




if you can't tell from the cell phone pics, it's a truck that is stuck halfway between the jack-in-the-box drive-thru lane and the adjacent denny's parking lot. it had been raining, and the back tires were caught in some mud. now first thing that comes to my mind is, how the heck did this happen, and how long has he been here. it smelt like burnt rubber.

so i roll down my passenger side window and ask him if i can help at all. he says yeah, sure. so i say okay, and speed off to get my food and go home. jk, but maybe that's what he thought i was doing, cuz i went to get my food first.

so i get my food, pop outta my car, and for the first time in a while i lock up my car because, well, i don't want my dos tacos getting stolen.

i'm walking up to the guy, and even though i was really curious, i didn't want to ask him how he managed to get stuck like this. probably embarrassed enough already. so he tells me to try pushing while he backs up. i'm like, are you kidding me, that's your best idea? but i go along with his little plan, and i push it off the curb without him even pushing the gas!

alright who am i kidding. i don't think i made any difference at all. it had been raining, so the concrete was slippery as crap. so i don't think i was doing anything other than wearing out the bottom of my shoes (OH what a perfect plug for crocs. you know, if i was wearing my crocs, it wouldn't have been slippery AT ALL).

good thing i actually have some experience with this sort of problem. what you need to do is get a piece of wood or something like that and just stuff it down right by the tire so it can have some friction to get outta the hole. but of course, we're not in the wild, so there wasn't a random piece of plywood lying around. darn.

after a few more futile tries, a couple denny's workers step out for a smoke or something and spot us. they come over with their truck offering to help. they immediately started laughing and asked how this happened. the guy was kinda annoyed and told them that he was in the drive-thru line, but it was taking so long. he couldn't wait a couple minutes longer, so he tried to take a shortcut across the lawn to freedom.

ironic, huh? sounds like something deborah would do (jk) (not really). tries to save a couple minutes, and ends up losing half an hour. i did my best not to laugh, but instead busted out with my cell phone to take the pictures above. i hope he didn't mind me doing that. he looked over a couple times while i was trying to get a good shot, but i pretended like i was on the phone. i don't think he bought it.

anyhow, with the other people's help, we successfully got him outta the rut and on with his life. and therein is my good deed of the year, as well as my 2nd post in 2 days. book it!

(do i get treasures in heaven for this? Jesus, you're keeping track, right?)