A Small Act Can Change Someone's World

A THREE MINUTE READ

Memorable days are like people, sometimes they just seem so ordinary, at least to start with. A bit of ho hum, sprinkled with low expectations, and maybe even a dash of boredom as they present themselves. Such was the case a couple Saturdays ago. My wife Emily and I ate breakfast, then she shuffled some plants around the yard and I doctored a few pieces of wood in the garage.

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After lunch, we headed off to a nearby lake for the local Fine Art and Music Festival. The day was perfect with temps in the upper seventies and a nice gentle breeze. Scattered clouds and a remarkably blue sky mimicked those we would see depicted in some of the paintings and photographs of this lakeside village.

There were probably fifty or so canopied booths that weaved back and forth along the shoreline and a couple hundred folk - “Just Looking.” A band comprised of musicians from Wisconsin and northern Illinois played an eclectic mix of music in the background. Nearby, a nice community playground kept some kids happy as their parents sat in chairs and listened.

We’d done a quick sweep through the rows of booths, bought some lemonade, and then went our separate ways to explore our notions of great artwork. It was a fairly upscale event though I did hear a woman yelling something off in the distance and noticed a scruffy looking guy, who I’ll just say didn’t quite fit in with his refined appearing neighbors.

His worn-out “GB Packers” cap did fit in with his mediocre quality woodworking. Being a so-so woodworker myself, I was tempted to see what he was charging for his grade “B” craftsmanship but I didn’t want to be another “looker only.” I fully get that it’s hard enough to make money even as a gifted artisan, so my heart especially went out to this guy.

I worked my way down a few booths to an older gent, whose thing was carving duck decoys of every variety that you might find on a Wisconsin waterway. We were talking as a thirtyish-year-old blond-haired woman walked by, calling for “Mallory,” her step picking up as she went down the long aisle. By a minute or two later it was obvious that she’d passed a threshold and frantically ran by in the other direction screaming - “my daughters missing!”

Probably a dozen people fanned out in different directions. I headed to the water’s edge, and seeing no one on the other side of the thick high grass, headed back up toward the playground on the one end of the town park. Seeing a young girl on a slide, I asked a guy, glued to his phone maybe thirty feet away, if that was his daughter. Though he seemed annoyed, he acknowledged it was.

I headed back the other direction and while walking by, noticed the scruffy guy just staring almost trance-like over the lake and the large docks. Not long after that, as the woman ran by yet one more time, he called out - “I think I might see a child in a blue boat on the end of that dock to the far right.” The woman ran toward and past the “Private Property” gate, and sprinted to the dock’s end where she hopped into the blue boat.

As the girl stood up, a dozen or so people watched her disappear - but only into the loving arms of one grateful mother.

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So many tragic outcomes of this story could have ended up on the nightly news - but for some regular guy doing a small but wonderful thing.

Would any of my readers care to share of their experience - when a relatively small act made a disproportionately large impact on someone’s life?