The Cowlicked Kindness of Strangers

I didn't catch his name, but our acquaintance wasn't social.  It was purely a matter of necessity.  After boarding our plane, only to be disgorged several minutes later because of equipment problems; after waiting for an update, booking an alternative schedule only to have it, too, evaporate for lack of a plane, the airline hired him to drive us to Omaha to catch a flight from there.  Weary of the wait and the associated drama, we were, despite the nuisance involved in the two-hour ferry west, happy for a solution that required no more effort from us and still delivered us to our destination on the same calendar square as originally intended.

I later thought how naively trusting we must be to tumble into the minivan of this total stranger whose hair cowlicking in interesting directions suggested very recent entanglement with pillows and sheets.  But I don't suppose I am any better acquainted with any of the pilots who were prepared to elevate me upwards of 37,000 feet.  By comparison, hurtling down I-80 at 70 miles-per-hour seems like child's play.  The reality is that I put my life into the hands of all kinds of total strangers.  This shuttle driver was simply the most immediate, and so we positioned our luggage on top of the junk piled in the back end of of his van, buckled up and sucked it up. 

Despite his nocturnal appearance, he told us that he had been at work when he got the call -- "work" being an auto mechanic at the body shop of a friend.  We asked how often he does this sort of thing, though I never really heard an explicit answer.  Maybe the airline swears him to secrecy on that delicate subject.  However often it happens, I thought to myself that it didn't sounds like the kind of job for which I would want to trade:  random calls to transport otherwise decent people ground down by the vicissitudes of "modern" travel into beleaguered grumps; two hours of testy silence, followed by two more lonely hours back along the same stretch of road.  But, then, he probably wouldn't want my job either.  That said, there are those times, every now and then, when a few quiet hours behind the wheel might would be therapeutic.  And I guess most people would love a crack at a pulpit at least once in their life.

However undesirable I might find his job, he successfully performed it -- arriving at the Omaha airport in ample time for us to make our substitute flight.  I think we thanked him, but I'm not altogether sure.  With the low expectations of a veteran of such trips, he waved to us a courteous "goodbye" and settled back behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb.  And it's true that we didn't tip him -- I figured that was the airline's business -- but if it hadn't been buried within my suitcase I would have made him a gift of my hairbrush.  And a smile.  Everyone deserves a smile -- especially a shade tree mechanic on a bad hair day who had the grace to let us sleep in his back seat while bridging our first leg to Vermont.