The other night I was out with Hubby and a couple of friends at a local pub. Beside us at the bar was a group of four – three men and one woman. They all seemed to be getting along fine but something made me feel uneasy. The woman’s body language was very tense. She had her legs crossed and her handbag clutched to her knee. Not unusual in a busy pub, but the more I watched the more she seemed uncomfortable. Two of the gentlemen in her group were well turned out, as was she in a black dress and heels, but the third was in scruffy tracksuit bottoms and a holey T-shirt. He had no regard for her personal space and had quite obviously sampled a fair amount of the local ale! He kept hanging off her and whilst she made no attempt to push him away, she certainly wasn’t returning the gestures.
As we were leaving all three men had gone for a smoke so I tapped her on the shoulder and, quite apologetically, asked her if she was alright and in safe company. She was understandably taken aback at a complete stranger asking after her well-being and politely told me that the scruffy chap was ‘her fella’. I apologised again and left. In the car on the way home I got to thinking how dare I be so bold and quite frankly rude and that I should have minded my own business. But then I thought, what if she had been in trouble, or just out of her depth and had needed some back-up?
I can be guilty of wading in with my size 7’s before giving the situation due thought and this is not the first time. A few weeks ago, I spotted a young man walking at the side of a particularly unsafe road. It was dusk and his head was down and his shoulders sagged. I stopped and offered him a lift. He initially declined but I persuaded him to let me take him to at least a safer part of the route. After a couple of minutes in the car he told me he had just split up with his girlfriend and she had chucked him – and a bin liner of his stuff – out. He told me where he was going (which was at least another five or six miles of pavement-less country roads) and as it was getting dark he let me to take him all the way to the edge of his village. As he got out of the car, he thanked me and walked sadly away.
All of the next day I thought about him and hoped he was alright. Teenage love can be such a desolate place and a broken heart is never easy to deal with. That evening I popped to the local shop and who should be coming out but my heart-broken passenger. His face lit up when he saw me and he gave me a big hug. He assured me all was well and thanked me for my kind act.
So, would I stick my boot in again to help a stranger – you bet I would and for every time it’s not needed, I apologise, but for the occasional time when it might just make a difference to a person’s day, I’ll take the risk. And to the lady in the pub – I hope if she reads this, she accepts my apology but understands that my motivation was one of concern for her not a judgement on the company she keeps or her fella’s dress sense!