Ch.248 Ron’s Good Deed

May 2024

          Levi, my collie mix, and I walk on the country roads by our home every day. Recently, I’ve reminded myself to notice what’s around me, as against thinking, thinking, thinking, and to notice new things or old things in new ways.

          This morning’s walk took place around 6 a.m., not very long after a night-long steady rain had saturated the fields. That’s when water drives worms out of the ground before they suffocate. And that’s when I find them all over the road, presumably because the roads are drier than the fields.

          Now usually by the time I walk the sun would have emerged and baked all the worms. But this morning several were still alive, covered with gravel and determinedly slithering over the road. Some were heading in the right direction, back towards the fields, but others were moving the wrong way, into the center of the road.

          I never had a chance to help little old ladies cross the road when I was a kid. Fact is my brother Don and I got lost trying to find our Cub Scout troop on what would have been our third meeting. That was enough to convince us that scouting would not be our destiny. Still, my heart went out to these misdirected worms. How were they any different than a lost dog, or cat, or little old lady?

          There was one, large, rounder than most worms, the kind children dig up to sell to fishermen. I could have let him die, of course, without a second thought. But not today. This time I picked up the fellow, not without resistance (he curled up into a ball, which actually made my job easier), and carried him across the road. But then I saw another. And another… Five in all.  I felt good, especially because I had done something helpful and seen something old in a new way.

          Moral of the story: Who needs to be a scout when you can help little old wormies cross the road all by yourself?