Today, when I was browsing for books at the half price book store, out the corner of my eye, I noticed a tall blond man come in and say something. After a few moments, I realized he was asking me if I could do him a favor. I said sure. He said he’d locked his keys in his car and he was too big to reach them. He wanted to know if I would slip through the window and grab his keys for him. I think anyone’s reaction to a man twice his size, asking him to squeeze into his car’s window, would be at least mildly hesitant. I was no exception. I doubted this man’s intentions but I had already agreed to help. My imagination flashed to an image of him pushing me into his car and being stolen away to some horribly secluded cabin. What kind of favor did he really have in mind?
I tried to talked to him as we walked out to his rusty red pickup truck in front of the store. He didn’t seem to be very talkative and was visibly embarrassed. Apparently he had been able to open the small back window of his pickup truck’s cab and he pointed me to his keys, still in the ignition. I climbed up into the bed of his truck and wriggled up to my waste into the window. I felt like one of those contortionists who squeeze themselves through tennis racket frames.
The air inside the cab was hot and stifling. Despite the fact that the pickup’s cab looked so small from the outside, it was a quite a stretch from the back window to the steering column where his keys dangled on a thin keyring. I was able to get my middle and index fingers around the keys but couldn’t pull them out. He mumbled something about having to turn them. I pulled harder and broke his keyring but the keys finally came loose. Clenching the keys in my hand, I thrust my upper body back out the back window and handed him his keys. As he thanked me, I realized that he was deaf. That’s why the conversation had been so sparse. I felt like a hero as I reentered the store. No one had even noticed I’d left.
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