Thank you

It was a normal morning, like any other.  Andy and I were wondering what we should do with our day.  We did a quick clean up on the house, nothing exciting at all.  Andy went to take the garbage out (yes, that’s how mundane this day really was) and nearly fell into a big bag of goodies.

We weren’t expecting anything from anyone.  Neither of us have a birthday.  We were completely stumped about this mystery package.  We thought maybe it was for one of the neighbors instead.  Regardless, we started going through the bag to see what was in it.  There was: a bottle of wine, 4 bags of highly addictive German christmas cookies- now dubbed the crack cookies, and a very soft, white stuffed moose.  At the very bottom of the bag was a thank you card.  (In German of course.)

Andy opened the card and started reading.  “It was almost a year ago now and I never have thanked you properly”, it read.  None of this was making any sense to us.  “You flashed your lights and made us pull over.  Just a couple more meters and our wheel would have flown off, causing an accident”.  Ah!  Of course!

Almost a year ago Andy and I were driving home down our 2 lane country road.  It was dark and cold at the time and mildly rainy.  There was a large van, full of people in front of us, and Andy noticed that one of the rear tires was wobbling horribly.  “What should I do”, he had said.  “Should I stop them”?  I remember answering with something like we don’t want anyone to get hurt, when all of a sudden one of the bolts went flying off the tire and across the road.  Andy flashed his lights, and after a few minutes got the driver to pull his van over.

Turned out this man was taking his wife and a bunch of her friends to some holiday dance show.  After a quick explanation he was in the back of our car and we were on our way to his shop to pick up a new van.  We never told him our names, only that we lived in Verlar and that I am an American and Andy is German and works on windmills.  And almost a year later he tracked us down and surprised us with a thank you bag of goodies.  We never expected anything, and yet were so touched to receive it.

Isn’t that cool?