Site Name

Today was a gorgeous day here in North Texas. One of the many tasks I had set before me was to have my car’s oil changed. Rather than hanging around inside the stuffy waiting room filled with outdated magazines and blatantly obvious infomercials, I decided to park myself on a bench outside of the service station. Soaking up the afternoon air I made small talk with a gentleman also enjoying the breeze. When all of the sudden, down the road a stretch about 200 yards from the station a little blue Subaru came to a hazardous stop in the middle of traffic. With lights flashing, I could make out the frantic flipping and flopping of hair in the driver side seat of the car. I gently motioned to the gentleman waiting beside me and said, “Looks like she is having car issues.” He agreed and went back inside.

After about 3 minutes with no obvious sign of improvement by the disabled driver, or the “gentleman” who now waited inside, I placed my purse on the chair beside him indoors and asked him to keep an eye on it and said, “I am going to see if that woman needs a hand. Would you be so kind as to watch my purse?” His gesture of complacency was enough to satisfy me, so I hiked up my jeans and jolted across the parking lot to the car, still in the middle of traffic.

As I approached the car, the woman had made her way out of the vehicle and was unbuckling a toddler from the back seat. It was fairly obvious that this was not part of her afternoon plans. The child was sweaty from the afternoon heat, and the mother was frantic, not quite sure of what words to pick to voice her situation. I calmed her down and let her know that no matter what is wrong with her car, it needs to be moved out of traffic first. I told her to pop the kid back in the car seat and grab the wheel while I pushed the car out of the traffic piling up behind her, and those that drove slowly as they gawked at the poor woman.

Not only did I push the car in flip flops mind you, but the turn into the closest parking lot was uphill from a dead stop. Passers by finally took heed of the woman’s plight, turned into the parking lot and got out to help. Before I knew it, there were three people beside me, aiding in the upheaval of the heaviest fucking Subaru in existence.

When the car was finally nestled into a parking spot and the woman calmed down and explained the situation, two more people appeared to lend a hand. Ends up the woman had simply run out of gas and was late to pick up her other child. “Ah, it has happened to everyone.” I said in jest, knowing good and well that it has never happened to me.

I made my way back to the service station, glared at the still waiting gentleman who was kind enough to watch my purse, and explained the situation to the station manager. He promptly grabbed a can of gas and made his way to resolve the woman’s issue. Upon his return he thanked me for being kind to the woman, and offered a free set of windshield wiper blades as a gesture of his appreciation (WINNAH!). He didn’t know the woman, but as he said, “We all have to watch out for each other.” And, while I didn’t exactly need the blades, it was such a nice token that I gladly accepted.

Why am I telling this story?

Well, you may have heard Haf’s story on Episode 38 this week… He passed on a HUGE upgrade that he had been waiting to receive for quite some time. Intern, upon entering TOC this week he received an even bigger upgrade for the same slot. Is it random? Is it karma? Who knows, but what I do know is one kind gesture leads to another.

Leading by example is important… No one had stopped to help that poor mother. People were driving around her car. But, all it took is one small hand to make a huge difference. There was no way I was going to be able to push that car up the hill by myself, but as people observed my good deed, they responded in droves to lend a hand.

Apply to Life and Game

Next time you are out farming herbs or mining in some low-level zone and a /1 nOOb comes up on your screen asking some random question, take the time to answer it, guide him to online resources and websites that he might not have discovered. We have all been that nOOb before, we all had to start somewhere, and it is the kindness of one person that opens the doors of information and insight that does so much to change our game, and the game of the people that we end up playing with.

-Stomp