I was all set to write a rant about this photo I took last night.

I was going to say something about the entitlement that some people feel in shopping malls when they choose to ignore obvious markers that say “don’t park here.” I was going to go on a tirade about impolite behavior in the guise of Christmas cheer. That was before.

On my way home in the early dusk of the solstice sunset, I encountered a motorist pushing his car across a very busy intersection. All the cars in the opposite direction were stopped, waiting for him to get across the street while he pushed his medium-sized sedan by himself in very cold weather. As he cleared the intersection and traffic began to move through, one of the cars rounded the corner and pulled up behind the guy who was still pushing his car. The new motorist got out of his car and went to help the guy push his car further out of the intersection and away from traffic. The Good Samaritan was not elderly, but his shock of grey hair marked him to be significantly older than the kid whose car had broken down. Then he went back, moved his own car further down the street and away from the intersection and appeared to confirm that the driver of the now safely parked dead car was going to be okay.  As the Good Samaritan returned to his own car, I rolled my window down and told the GS that what he had done was really nice, and then drove off myself.

This whole scenario took about 3 minutes but it broke the hold the jerk in the mall parking lot had on me. For every person who mows down a cone in a parking lot, there’s another person who will take the time out of their commute to help a stranger. That’s the true meaning of Christmas spirit to me.