gurdonark

my rental canoe, originally uploaded by gurdonark.

Did you ever have a moment when you hoped, a bit against hope, that some anonymous stranger would throw you out a line? Not a life-line, exactly, and certainly not a pick-up line, but just a modest vine or rope to get you out of a ravine? I have those moments from time to time. Today I had one of those moments as I went to pick up my mail. You see, for the second time this year, I mislaid my driver's license. I had pretty much exhausted places to look. Since I live in Texas, getting a replacement license can require hours in line. It's a long story why this is so, when, in a more enlightened, less "business-like" era, this was not so.

As I proceeded to the mailbox, I thought, "if someone found my license, this would be about the time it arrived in the mail". Sure enough, in the mailbox, amid catalogs and a letter from the local contemporary classical music society thanking me for a modest donation, I found a letter addressed to my surname, with the return address my surname and address. Inside the letter was my license, hidden within a folded red index card. No note, no credit, no identifiers, other than a Little Rock postmark. I assume someone found it in Camden.

I love Little Rock. It's where I went to law school. Tonight, though, it's simply a place from which a random act of kindness emanated--like handing me a paddle, when I was in the middle of a lake, in a canoe.