A new visitor to our hood was a bag left in the middle of our very busy city street. While drivers cautiously drove around it, a few pedestrians circled it, unsure of what to do. But both drivers and pedestrians had the same question, "How could anyone lose a bag in the middle of the street and not notice it was missing?"
A few walked away, glancing back at the bag from time to time. Then a no-nonsense woman decided to take action. She walked over, picked it up, only to be suddenly stricken with worry. What if someone thought that she was going to steal whatever was inside? As she looked around to see who was looking, she realized that this only made her look more guilty. But someone had to do something, and it was up to her. She thought about the owner, as she walked over to the sidewalk. It probably belonged to a child, but someone somewhere was going to have a few frantic seconds wondering what happened to his or her backpack.
As she opened up the bag, to her surprise she found a woman's black leather wallet, with credit cards, library cards and a driver's licence.
Several blocks away, I was just arriving at my daughter's school to pick her up with my 20-month son in tow in his sister's sled. This sled is too big for him, and he is always trying to crawl out on to the sidewalk. Much to my chagrin, his sled was in the back of my hubbie's car, which meant that we had to use the remaining sled, his sister's. In order to keep him in the sled, I had to walk at a brisk pace so that he couldn't crawl out. I also had to turn around constantly to make sure that he was still in it. At 20 months, he's fast on all fours, and because we are walking on the sidewalks of some well-travelled city streets, my fear is that within seconds he could be on the road.
Just two metres from the school door, I bend over to pick up junior when I realize...oh shit. With junior in tow, I start to backtrack, looking to see if I can see any sign of... my bag. I put it with junior so that he would fit more snugly in the sled, but the little beggar decided to give it the heave ho as we were zipping along sidewalks and crossing streets. I start to ask passersby if they have seen my bag, but no no one has seen a bag on the side of the road. As I'm quickly walking back on the road we took, I am taking a mental inventory of all the ID I may have to replace.
Of course, as I'm backtracking and looking straight ahead for signs of my bag, junior is enjoying the excitement and taking every opportunity to crawl out of the sled. After he gleefully crawled out for the third time, I decided to go home and call my husband. As we are walking up to our building, my husband pulled up beside us. From the window, he showed me my bag.
As we climbed into the car to go pick up my daughter, he told me that he had just run into a woman in front of our building ten minutes earlier and that she had picked up my bag in the middle of the road. Knowing that I would be a little anxious, he jumped back into his car to see if he could find us. Of course, he wanted to know how I could have unwittingly dropped it in the middle of the road...I briefly explain to him what happened. He said that he didn't think that it was a good idea to put my bag in with our active baby, but the sermon came to an abrupt halt once he realized that he had the baby's sled in his trunk.
It was obviously a very auspicious day for me, and I would like to thank this woman for her kindness and for the trouble she went through to deliver my bag to us in person. This woman saved us all so much time and worry.
Merci beaucoup!
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