Quote of the Day: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” I don’t really feel like expounding on this quote other than to say that I am glad I have plenty of honest friends. I know it’s no coincidence that I always seem to meet the right people at the exact right time I need to.


Speaking of being in the right place at the right time, I had a weird experience this morning that was not at all funny. I usually go on a walk every day before work and since I work right downtown I see lots of “interesting” things thanks to all the colorful downtown characters. I usually just laugh everything off because so much of the La Comedie Humane is too absurd to do anything else about. Not today though.

I was walking earlier this morning when I saw a flash of purple behind me so bright that I had to turn around and look. As soon as I did, I saw an elderly woman in a pimp-purple coat fall down and strike the pavement hard with her face. I ran over to her and asked her if she was all right. She said she was before trying to sit up on her knees and falling back down during the attempt. She was shaking horribly and had a pretty scary cut on her cheek that was bleeding quite a bit. I asked her if I should call nine-one-one. She said she was fine and didn’t need my help. She did try to grab my arm when I offered it to her but she was still too weak to do anything with it. When I started to bend over to pick her up, another woman stopped by and offered to help who then walked off as soon as the two of us managed to get the old woman up onto her feet.

I then held her in my arms to keep her from tumbling over and asked her where she was going. She said - with very slurred speech - that she was heading to the federal building. I said I would take her there even though she said I didn’t need to. So we walked across the street and up the block to the federal building while I held her closer than I’ve held any woman in the past six months because I had to practically carry her. We stopped at the front entrance and she grumbled at me for taking her to the wrong place. It turned out she worked there so I had to take her to the employee entrance. I told her she needed medical attention but she just kept shaking her head no and the security guards with guns started eyeing me suspiciously so I left as soon as she made it safely inside. I hope she’s all right. I fear she may have suffered some kind of a stroke. She was so calm about everything that I suspect something was not working right upstairs.

Nothing like a shot of adrenaline to start the morning off right.