Amidst the common chaos of socks-in-the-dryer, solar flares, The Donald, Mr. Wonderful and Facebook are uncommon people who intrinsically and anonymously go out of their way to help make a bad situation better.
Thursday Feb. 24 started as a normal day: I am a bookkeeper who also teaches people how to do bookkeeping. My task that day was to tutor a client who lives at the far-east hinterland hollow of Penticton Avenue where “… the deer and the antelope play.”
Upon completing my tutoring, I packed up my briefcase, laptops and bag of tricks and headed to a meeting at Shades On Main. After said meeting, I arrived at my car to realize my bright blue coil-bound 2017 daytimer was missing (bad situation). I went back into the restaurant to search for it: no luck. I called my client at the far-east hinterland hollow of Penticton Avenue: no luck. I decided to retrace my route back to the hinterland home-on-the-former-driving-range of my tutor client. I drove slowly, scouring the roadways in case my daytimer had perhaps fallen off my car (I had stopped twice along the way to take pictures of scenery), but no luck.
Arriving back at my tutor client, I rang the doorbell and was invited in to look for my daytimer, no luck. I carefully retraced my route back to Shades On Main, no luck.
Realizing my billable appointments were in my daytimer, I immediately went to Staples and purchased a bright green coil-bound 2017 daytimer. With my new $14.24 coil-bound purchase, I sat in my car for the next hour trying to write down places, dates and times of appointments in February that I hadn’t yet billed (Blackberry call and text history is a wonderful thing). I decided I could try to fill in the remaining blanks by contacting my clients.
Still undeterred, I drove to the Husky/Mohawk on Fairview to inquire if someone had turned it in (I had filled up with gas there that morning), no luck. ‘Lo, two days later, my hinterland tutor client from Penticton Avenue called me to say they had found my daytimer. Truth is, someone had apparently found it on the road (it had signs of road rash), put it in a clear plastic bag, and attached the bag to a post just a few hundred metres from my client’s home.
How many people drove over my daytimer thinking that I had intentionally tossed it? How many people would look at a daytimer on the road and think to stop and pick it up? How many people would take the time to find a clear plastic bag and hang it with the daytimer inside in an obvious place, hoping that the daytimer and owner (me) would be reunited?
Thank you to the people who intrinsically and anonymously engage random acts of kindness (you know who you are). The battle of socks-in-the-dryer versus mankind has momentarily turned in our (mankind’s) favour.
Arlene Arlow
Keremeos