Mommy the heroine

At least this is what N is calling me today.

I am not the kind of person who generally stops to help people or dogs or do anything that would be considered good samaritan-like.  Ok, there was that one time when I was pregnant and saved a snapping turtle, but surely that was just crazy hormones having their way with me.  

But today, after taking N to the orthodontist, I saw an older woman (late 60s or early 70s) walking along the expressway away from her car.  Maybe she reminded me too much of my own mother, but I pulled over and walked to meet her, to see if she needed help.  She had run out of gas.  

She used my phone to call her son.  She said he didn't say anything out of shock when she explained what had happened which I suspect might be the normal response when children come to that stage of life when they end up parenting their parents.  I told her son I would drop her off at the nearest Starbucks so that she wouldn't be alone with her car until he could leave work and come help her (since I couldn't stay with her indefinitely because I had to pick up G from preschool and return N to school).  

Once we dropped her off, N kept saying, "That was such a nice thing to do, Momma."  

And it was.  But I then had to explain my rationale for helping.  That I helped because she was an older woman, and I felt like it was safe for me to give her a ride.  That if she had been a young man I wouldn't have done so (and likely wouldn't have stopped at all).  I would have offered my phone and then been on my way.  That I only would have given a ride to an old, old man, like Papaw Chester's age.  That it is nice to help people but you have to protect yourself.  I had to take into consideration her and M's safety too.  

All that explaining seemed, at least to me, to take some of the shine off having my children see me do a nice deed and learn how to treat people, but there is no way around it.  Such is life in the modern world.