Small Mercies

S was pulling out his umbrella when he came to the end of the foot bridge. It was a very strange design, leaving a 10 meter gap between the footbridge on the left and the shelter of the building on the right. What a nuisance, he thought, forcing me to open my umbrella and then to fold it up again in 5 seconds. If it weren’t raining so hard I would just walk across - the people who designed it must have been idiots.

He noticed two persons in wheel chairs at the end of the footbridge watching the rain. What an odd place to watch the rain, he thought to himself. They didn’t seem to be enjoying it either, and they were blocking the path. Being a slow thinker, by the time he realized they were probably forced to wait there because they had no umbrellas, he had almost reached the other side.

Looking like an idiot himself, S turned around and held out his umbrella. The young man understood immediately; perhaps he had been waiting for such a gesture for a while already. He rushed his wheelchair down the gentle slope, with S playing to catch up. The small umbrella couldn’t quite cover the two of them and the wheelchair – all got quite wet. S turned around to escort the young woman across, with similar results. The two thanked S profusely anyway. And having shared a big laugh at their state of wetness, they bid each other farewell.

A very small gesture of mercy in poor weather – which seemed to brightened the day for all three of them. I couldn’t help to think, though – what happened to all the people who walked past those 2 before S?