Day 3

I anticipated little acts of kindness frequently showing up in my daily reminisces of good things, however, I never imagined I would see one as, well... large scale, as I saw today.

We were hardly two hours into the ten hour drive back to school when I noticed the truck in the lane next to us behaving strangely. Smack in the middle of a busy interstate, he had slowed to maybe 25 mph and was flashing his emergency lights. It seemed natural to assume car troubles were the culprit of his inexplicable leisure so my eyes lazily traveled past him and over to the shoulder where I waited for him to drift. When he didn't I glanced back with more concern. The vehicle seemed find, beyond fine actually. In fact, the word "stable" popped into my head as a descriptor.

I quickly took note of the cars around him and this time, my eyes immediately caught the real cause for emergency. A red jeep was swerving peculiarly, as if it couldn't remember how to touch its finger to the tip of its nose. At this point I was craning in my seat to observe the scene, but before we passes it altogether, my mind grasped one certain thought about the jeep's driver: he was having a seizure. We watched over our shoulders - and mountains of luggage - as the jeep swerved up a bank and back down again, threatening to roll from the angle.

Before the road took us around a bend and the incident out of sight, it was clear to me that I had had been blessed with a privileged glance into the best of humanity. Because suddenly, between our car, and the rest of traffic - thousands of cars - was space. Nearly half a mile of freeway with no other cars save the precarious jeep with its suffering driver.

The little white truck who first caught my attention also saw the man in the red jeep, and instead of puttering on by thinking ,"How sad" or "I hope he's alright" or "Someone should do something", literally stopped traffic in an attempt to help. Other cars joined in too, until at last I saw for the first and probably last time, a Citizen's Traffic Break. A bubble of sympathy and generosity in the form of empty road.

I have no idea if the jeep ended up crashing or safely coasting to a stop (although the former wouldn't surprise me). I do know that regardless, he did so without endangering any other car or more importantly any other driver. If he did crash, his injuries were far less severe than if he had collided with five lanes of traffic. If he didn't, he was safe and protected and in a place where help could arrive immediately and directly. In either case, a life was likely saved.

All because of one little white truck.