Ethel

An odd thing happened... I was driving over to my parents house tonight, it was about 10:00. I was coming down Modesto road, and in the distance I could see something in the road. I slowed down. Coming closer I see that its a person. An old lady. My immediate thought was 50 points!! Just kidding.

I pull closer to the lady, I can see that she is awake, and in sort of a sitting position in the middle of the road. I stop my car and ask her if she's ok. She says 'no'. ...Obviously. I ask her if she needs help, and she says 'yes'. I pull my car over to the side of the road park it and walk over to her. She tells me that she can't get up. From the way she was sitting in the middle of the road, it looked like she fell there, then sat herself up. Shes not wearing shoes, nor is she wearing a coat, i'd guess shes about 75 years old. I ask her if i can help her up, she says 'yes'. So I begin trying to help her, but its not much use, so I pick her up entirely, as gentley as I could and walked her over to the side walk.

At this point, there was a guy that came out of his house to come see if we needed help. His name was Will. He had kind of shaggy, long hair and two lip rings. I've never met anyone with a lip ring whom I didn't like. Its like all the good, kind people of the world get their lip pierced. ...Anyway. Together we talked to her, tried to figure out where she came from, who she was... Her name was Ethel. I found this humourous becuase thats what my ipod is named. ...Anyway. She was freezing, it was a little after 10, and the sun was setting, thank heavens for this being the longest day of the year. I had a coat in my car, so I went and grabbed it for her, and I was walking back over and I saw that Will had taken off his shoes, and was trying to get Ethel to put them on. Seriously, nice guy.

At this point I had two options, call the police, or call my mom. My mom was just around the corner, so I figured I'd call her, then she could call the poilce. We all win. Will asked if he could go, and we said we'd take care of it. We knew she had to live fairly close by, because her socks weren't that dirty, but we'd never seen her before, so she lived probably a block or two away. She was totally disorientated. She knew her name, and she could remember eating breakfast, but it was all black between breakfast and now. She kept saying she was 'with the girls' and she 'was fine this morning'. We asked if she was married, she said she was, but she wasn't sure if her husband was alive or dead. I got Ethel into my car to wait for the police, and i cranked the heat.

I love Lethbridge. Three cruisers showed up. 6 police officers. Sweet. They tried to talk to Ethel, couldn't get much information from her. So they started knocking on doors. They called it in, to see if anyone had reported a missing person. Turns out her husband just called to report Ethel missing, she lived around the corner and down a couple blocks. It was actually a lot farther than I thought she could walk.

So, I offered to drive her home. I was parked on the west side of the street and needed to turn around so I joked with the officer "you aren't going to give me a ticket for flipping a U-ie right here are you?" She laughed at that and said no. Then the officer in the other cruiser looked at me and said "She said no...but i might." Funny people. I'm glad cops are real people.

She got home safe and sound. I kind of felt bad for her. This whole ordeal took like an hour from the time I found her in the middle of the road to the time she was back in her house. I hope I never get like that. I couldn't imagine not knowing anything about myself or where I was... It would be scary.

So, thats how I spent my night. It was nice having a positive conversation with the police, for a change... and I guess I did my good deed. So, overall- successful night. For real though, I hope she's good.