Stranger

Write about something nice a stranger did for you.

Haley rode a school bus home from an away volleyball game, arriving at the high school after 10 PM where I picked her up. Just as the school bus pulled away from the high school for the night, she realized her cell phone must have fallen off her lap and still be on the bus. It was an expensive phone with lots of the latest high tech features. We tried chasing after the bus but could not find where it went. We started calling her cell phone hoping the bus driver would hear it. It was a noisy bus and she had been back in the very back. After dozens of calls over 1/2 an hour, we gave up. We had no idea where the buses parked, which bus it was or who the driver was. The school district had changed garage locations within the last couple of years and it could have gone anywhere in the county. We knew that the bus would start again very early the next morning picking up school children long before the district offices opened. We had to come to grips with the fact that, more than likely, a kid would find it, use it to play video games until the battery ran out, then discard it. I was heartsick. The next morning, as I was driving Haley to school at 7:30, I asked her to try calling her cell number one more time. I struggled with the wisdom of that idea because the ringing phone might alert a child to its location who otherwise would not see it, and they would then pocket the phone. No one answered. A minute after Haley left the car, my cell phone rang. It was a young girl who said she had just found the phone on the school bus and seen that there were many calls from my number. She had just arrived at Canyon View Jr High, on the opposite side of town, and would leave the phone in the office. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. What a very considerate thing for a stranger to do! As I kept repeating "thank you," she giggled and hung up.