Friday, January 22, 2010

Thank Goodness for Good Samaritans

It's been a pretty rotten day. I took a boot camp class at the YMCA two days ago that has left me hammered - I have never been this tremble-when-you-see-a-set-of-stairs-sore in my life - and I have taken the opportunity to let anyone I talk to know about it. So just getting around the house, cleaning and dealing with whiny children that want to be held has not been great. Add to that PMS and school off today and I think you can imagine what a monster mom I have been.

So to top it off, tonight at 9:30 Cooper and I went to Target to get him a pair of water sandals to take with him to the beach this weekend with a friend. As we were casually inspecting the sandals and perusing the 75 percent off aisle, I hear over the loud speaker, "Will the owner of the black BMW with the license plate #1UMFan come to the customer service desk?" My heart sunk, but I thought it was just because I left the lights on again - this is Austin's car and I don't drive it very often and tend to leave lights on and run the battery down and then need a jump and such. Well, it was a bit worse than that. Apparently I left the car, a standard, in neutral and forgot to engage the emergency brake. So while we were nonchalantly shopping, our car started to roll across the parking lot, scraping the cart corral on its way to Panera Bread - not real close to Target by the way. Then a stranger saw the problem, jumped into the car while it was rolling, pulled the E-brake and then pushed it into a new parking spot. Then he left.

He didn't steal the car or anything in it, or laugh as it rolled into a building or another car. A complete stranger put himself in danger by running after the car, stopping it and then pushing it to a new spot. Probably not what he was planning when he set out for Target tonight. And the car was nowhere close to where I originally parked it, it moved nearly half the parking lot away. The car isn't wrecked, there is a scrape along the side from the cart corral but nothing like what could have happened.

I feel so much gratitude for this person who did this. I never got to meet him, he was gone before I found out what happened. So all I could do is thank my Heavenly Father for putting someone in place to help me avoid a major catastrophe. It just shows how much he loves me, this could have been significantly worse and instead it was minor.

6 comments:

Erin said...

Wow! I am so glad that your rogue car didn't hit anyone! It's nice to know that there are some selfless people out there. I am glad that person was there at the right time to help you.

I hope everything is okay with Cooper. Hang in there Shanda!

Unknown said...

Wow Shanda, What a blessing. Tender Mercies of the Lord are so great especially on days where you feel like the Monster Mom like you mentioned. Hope family is well. Hugs to an old friend. :)

Dave Fuhriman said...

I love this story -- thanks for brightening our day Shanda. Come visit whenever you can m'dear.

Fuhrimans

Ariana said...

Yay for good people in the world!! Speaking of free-range cars, one time my dad had been working on one of our cars (a long time ago in MN) and something happened and it rolled down our driveway and up into the neighbor's yard. Hit one of their trees. Luckily my dad wasn;t under the car when it happened. After that though, he always put HUGE wedges under the wheels when he was working on a car.

Molly said...

yowsers! What a crazy night! Glad everyone is ok!

Audrey said...

what is it with bmws? an old co-worker of mine had a bmw cross south blvd and make it into the parking lot across the street!! :0) yikes! and not a scratch! i'd tell you her name but her husband doesn't know this happened, hee,hee.