A FRIEND LIKE YOU

A FRIEND LIKE YOU

 

My identification card expired, so my friend Teresa took me to the DMV to get a new one. While we stood at the counter the lady was tap, tap, tapping in the keys that needed to be used to get the correct information. Now, for almost forty years the name on my card was misspelled, with an I where the Y should be. This time I took in my birth certificate to prove the correct spelling. Just as the lady typed in information with an exceptional fast speed my friend commented: “That color on your fingernails looks so pretty.” “Thank you,” the lady said as she never missed a beat. A conversation then ensued between her and Teresa as she kept right on typing. Thoughts of my name being misspelled worse than ever crossed my mind and I considered purposely stepping on Teresa’s toe to make her hush. On and on went the little babbling conversation between the two ladies and I heard a smile in the lady’s voice. Finally the information was in and the picture taken.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked the lady.

“You don’t have to pay for a card when you are blind,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I have always had to pay before.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have had to,” she answered, still with that smile in her voice.  “And” she said:  “I fixed your name.”

That isn’t the end of the story. We got back in Teresa’s truck and she told me there was a young man carrying a baby in a basket wrapped only in a blanket and the baby’s toes and chest were nakedly exposed. I could hear tears in Teresa’s voice as she recited this concern.

“What do you think would happen if we went and got something to put on that baby?” she asked me.

Thoughts of both of us laying dead in the middle of the DMV crossed my mind as I slightly shivered along like the baby but for different reasons. We rode on a little bit batting the pros and cons across the front seats and since she was driving all I could do was ride along as off to Target we went. She came out of the store with a oneZ in her hand and back to the DMV we went.

Why didn’t I go back in the DMV with her? Because it was too much trouble to get out of my warm seat? Because it was too much trouble to get Vivi out of the back seat? Because I needed to make a phone call? If you guessed any of those reasons you’d be wrong. I felt a little intimidated to walk up to a stranger I didn’t even know and offer something for a baby, probably five weeks old. “He should have sense enough to know not to bring a baby outside when it is 43 degrees dressed that way,” I thought, as I also thought about all those WWJD bracelets that used to be so popular?  (What would Jesus do?”)

Teresa came back to the truck and I heard a smile shining all over her face.

“Oh, Myra!” she said. That was the sweetest experience! That young man just received that gift with the biggest smile ever as he thanked me. You could tell how happy it made him.”