It was not just your ordinary day...

She walked over to me pushing her walker ahead of her. I thought she had a question so I stopped in front of her. She asked me for directions to a street on a card she was carrying in her wallet. I could only semi-guess at the street. I knew the streets around the area, but that particular one I wasn't positive about. I asked her if she had driven her car over and where she had parked. She assured me she had walked, not driven, but she had gotten turned around and couldn't find her way back to her house.

Confused, she looked across the very busy, possibly six-laned street beside us and said, "I don't think I crossed over that road over there." To which I assured her, I didn't think she had crossed that road either! She surely would have been riding in the back of an ambulance or worse, had she tried to cross that busy road under the best of circumstances.

So, she thanked me, and I continued on my way into the donut shop to get two of our remaining free donuts using the coupons left over from Christmas. (Yes, dear daughter, we still have some remaining and Miss Annabelle can now share another dozen with us using coupons for Valentines Day which they gave us as we were leaving.) But, it kept nagging at my very soul. How could I have left that little lady there knowing she didn't know where she was nor how to get back home. That was pure heartless.

We finished picking out our donuts and I told Granddaddy what had happened. We both agreed we needed to do what we could to find her and get her back home. I had peeked out of the donut store earlier and had seen her a long ways across the parking lot. I have to say, she may have been pushing a walker, but that little lady wasn't let any grass grow under her little feet. She was flat-out moving!

So, she had a good head start on us by the time we got back outside, and she was no where in sight when we headed out looking for her. I jokingly told my sister to be on the listen out in case she didn't hear from us. This would be the starting point in case we disappeared from the face of the earth. You never know what scenario can be unraveling even when you think you are doing a good deed. She could have had a partner in crime. After all, she was a pretty fast moving woman.

We drove by the last place I had seen her. She was no where to be found. We looked up and down the street that turned off of the busier street. That street was almost as dangerous as the first one. I had told her the less busy street was probably the one she had come up, and that was why she had headed that way. Maybe she had popped into the bank for directions? Maybe she was half-way home by now? We had no idea so we headed up the road I had sent her on and even down the road she was still no where to be found.

My heart sank and I was really beginning to feel pretty miserable that I had not insisted or at the minimum, offered to take her home when we finished getting our donuts.

We turned around and headed back to the shopping center hoping against hope that we would find her. As I looked at the side of the road where I thought she had come from, I began to have my doubts. The side of the road wasn't paved where she would have walked and it was rough looking where she would have gone with her walker.

Shortly after turning into the shopping center, I saw the spunky little lady talking to a man who was trying to put up a sign or something. He were trying to give her directions, and from the movements of his arms I could tell his directions were opposite from the ones I had given her. We pulled up behind them, I got out of the car and as soon as she saw my face it was as though she had known me forever. I thanked the man giving her directions and told him we would make sure she found her way home.

I asked her if we could take her home in our car. She was not hesitant in the least. I helped her into the front seat, put her walker into the trunk and we fastened her into the front seatbelt and started our search for her street address.

It wasn't the street I had thought it was, so we went down the road further. Nothing looked familiar to her, so we turned around and headed back down the original road I had thought it was. Then we came to the street she lived on, we just didn't know which way to turn. Still nothing really looked familiar to her, but we turned the right way and finally found her residence.

As we pulled into the front of the building a man came out the front door, headed for his car, and saw her sitting in the front seat. He gave her a quick wave and came over to speak to her. I was so relieved to find we really had found her residence. The man said he thought we were relatives and were bringing her back.

All the way back to finding her place she kept saying over and over, "Oh, I'm so embarassed!" "This keeps reminding me of the commercial I saw just last night about the man and woman in the bowling alley and she gets lost!" She truly was very embarassed. I felt so very sorry for her.

Her daughter had put a card printed in large print with her house number, apt. #, etc. so she knew what her address was when she handed me the card. I had asked if she had a phone number of someone I could call, but she would have none of that. I noticed that she had an ICE number below the address information. I asked her permission to call the number. At first she told me it was her home number and nobody was there because she was here with us! I pointed out to her that it was an ICE number (in case of emergency) so it must be someone to call for help, but she was still not buying that, so I didn't think she needed to be aggravated or frightened anymore than she already was, so I dropped that idea. But, I am concerned about her in the future. Maybe she was afraid her freedom would be over if I called her daughter. She had her reasons.

She told us she had been here for seven months having moved down here from an upper northern state. She had just gone for a nice walk this morning and as we found out when we left her house, she really hadn't gone all that far at all. She really would have gone for a nice long walk if she had followed my directions! I am so thankful we found her and gave her a ride home.

Tonight would have been a very long night with lots of tossing and turning if we had left that little lady out on the street by herself. I'm not sure I could have lived with myself.

Sleep well tonight yourself, Miss Ann. And be careful how you venture out of your area. There's no telling how many evil people you can run into. And I'm glad you weren't up to no good yourself! You were a pleasure to meet and talk to. And you weren't a bother at all! No matter how much you thought you were.