1-7-2011 It's a beautiful day, sun is out, the slightest of chills in the air but nothing long sleeves won't cure. I walk out the front door of our 'lil' house to find this lil (lil sounds better than little but I digress) old lady wandering the streets of our neighborhood obviously looking lost. She looks, ummm, welll, trailer-y. Kinda scruffy, holding a ciggy, burned down to the nub, in her nicotine stained fingers.
Quit bit of background, it is not all that rare that people get turned around in our neighborhood. A lot of streets, including ours start and stop in a few places. So if you go up 2 blocks, turn right and go 2 blocks, turn right and go 2 blocks more to make a square...well you may not end up where you think.
So anyways for the third time in the past year, me being the super nice guy I am, approach this latest weary traveler and say "Hi Ma'am, can I help you?" To which she says..."No, I'm fine I'm just looking for Wisconsin Ave".
"ummmmmmm," I'm say with more sarcasm than confusion, cuz that's how I roll, "you're on Wisconsin."
She perks up and says "Oh ok then, I'm not lost. I live just a few blocks away."
Now that could have and probably should have been the end of it. But no, I need to have a clear head when I send her on her way. So I ask one more question. "what is your address?" I'm not sure why I asked...ok yes I am, she was obviously confused and Wisconsin starts and stops more than any other street in this wacky neighborhood.
annnnnyways, she says "917"
DOH! "917? Ma'am that is a good mile an a half from here and on the other side of the Alt 19!" (Alt 19 is, strangely enough, and alternate route for hwy 19. It's not a major hwy but definitely busy enough where a confused old lady could get run over.
She says, belligerently I might add "I DID NOT CROSS alt 19!!!!!"
I know I'm right (as per usual) so we continue "Ma'am, you had to cross alt 19 to get this far."
Her appreciation for me continues to ooze out like Molten lava. "Sir, I AM NOT LOST, I live just a few blocks from here, Thank you anyway."
OK so, I'm not great with people who are rude to me, not even lil old ladies with nicotine stained fingers smoking a ciggy nub. So I say, "OK, take care" and after walking over to the neighbor who was once a cop to discuss this development, he says, "oh yeah 917 is just a few blocks up."
"HUH? Bill, we live on what should be the 1700 block, how can the 900 block be just a few streets up?"
Well, he says, That can't be right, that house, pointing to the house on the corner where 'trouble' lives. "Is 1077."
"Well you're the retired cop...you must be right"
So we walk over there to find the house is actually 1707!!!! Just like I, ME, MYSELF said it was.
By now, the ciggy nub smoker is a block or two away and I go back inside, glad that my neighbor is a RETIRED cop.
This is where the real fun begins. I tell my wife what happened and she wants to know what I'm doing in the house and why I'm not helping nicotine fingers.
Soooooooooo I google the address to find the phone and...ADDRESS NOT FOUND!!! DAMN IT!!!!!!
As my wife and I get into the car, yep, you guessed it, I tell her she's probably just right up the road. We catch up to this sweet confused lil old lady as she wanders across an intersection without so much as batting an eye in either direction.
I get out of the car and say, as nice as I possibly can be expected, "Ma'am, why don't you let us take you home to 917 Wisconsin?" She says "because I live at 915 Wisconsin"
I gotta get my hearing checked...I hate this!!!
"OK. we'll take you to 915 then, you're still a mile away and it's across a busy hwy."
So she gets in the car and using GPS we take her to her neighborhood. Once there she realizes that yes, in fact we were right and her house was across a busy intersection. Of course, happy ending right? WRONG. She starts to get crazy again and insist we let her out blocks away from her house. We politely say, it's really no problem. So what does she do? She opens the door WHILE WE ARE MOVING...and says I'M GETTING OUT WHETHER YOU STOP OR NOT!!!.
So, we stop on a dime and let her out. She then flips back over to sweet lil ol' lady and says "thanks so much, that was really kind of you. At which point I instruct my wife to run her over. Just kidding.
Just more proof, no good deed goes unpunished.
No comments:
Post a Comment