TWO HEROES

[schlomo]

Two Heroes

At one point while I was on the bus headed to another one of my routine doctor’s visits, a brigade of wheelchairs, walkers, and wagons slid up the lowered ramp and vainly tried to maneuver along the narrow bus aisle. A muscular father who was seated in the front row soon began to assist the newcomers. At the same time, with painstaking assurances, he was able to calm down his baby and his stressed-out partner.  With the flair of a maestro, he orchestrated viable seating arrangements so that everyone and their perambulating aids were comfortably and securely seated.

But I bet that the Good Samaritan was not anticipating what happened next. A young man who must have been at least 300 pounds entered the bus. Despite the relatively uncluttered aisle, his torso was hemmed in between two oversized walkers filled with slightly leaking hefty bags. Confronted with this dilemma, the husband squeezed the bags with its detritus onto the empty ledge at the bus entrance. Now that the passageway was cleared, the extra large young man shuffled down the aisle to the back row of seats.

Even though no one applauded the father’s crucial intervention, I was tempted to shout out at least one bravo; but I didn’t want to possibly embarrass anyone by emphatically acknowledging the heroism of the much beleaguered but indefatigable father.

After I got off the bus, I had to walk up a steep hill to the doctor’s suite. Ahead of me, I saw a middle-aged man pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair. There was no room for me to pass by them because the sidewalk was so narrow, so I politely stayed behind, even when the caretaker briefly stopped a couple of times. After all of us reached the top of the hill, we went in the same direction toward the medical center.

From what I could observe, the man never complained about the ordeal up the hill. My gut told me that he would never let his ward languish. Whatever she needed, he would graciously accommodate her.

Heroism is alive and well in Honolulu, no matter where you go. The Aloha Spirit is not just an abstraction. It is embedded in our daily lives.