(My husband and I, in our mid-twenties, are exiting a store with our cart. He puts his feet on the edge of the cart, and with a gleeful yell rides it down to our car. At the same moment, an elderly couple approaches the store, with the husband pushing the cart. He grins and starts running, pushing the cart ahead of him.)

Me: “They never grow up, do they?”

Elderly Woman: “No, dear, they don’t.”

(Every morning I have a regular couple. They always order the same thing, so today I decide to try an upsell.)

Me: “Good morning, Mr. H. Is it the usual today?”

Mr. H: “Yes, please, [My Name].”

Me: “Can I tempt you to anything to nibble on this morning? We have some lovely croissants.”

Mr. H: “Oh, no, thank you. I’ll just wait for Mrs H to get back and I’ll nibble on her.”

(I work in a traffic court and am visiting with people to determine what they want to do on their tickets. I call the name of a defendant who has a ticket for parking in a handicap parking space. As the man approaches, I see that he is elderly and walks slowly. Usually that means he had a tag to hang from the rear-view mirror, authorizing him to park in the handicap space, but it had fallen down, or he had just failed to put it up. Those tickets can be easily dismissed if the person just shows the tag at court.)

Me: “Good morning, sir. I see you have a handicap parking ticket. Do you have a handicap tag?”

Defendant: “Yep.”

(He digs into his paperwork and begins pulling out the blue plastic hang-tag.)

Me: “Ah, did you just not have it up at the time?”

Defendant: *handing me the tag* “No, I had it up the whole time. Don’t know why they gave me a ticket.”

(This is unusual, but it only takes a quick glance at the tag to see what the problem is.)

Me: “Sir, this tag expired in 2007.”

Defendant: *very matter-of-factly* “Yep.”

Me: “Well, it’s no wonder they gave you a ticket, then.”

Defendant: “That was my father’s. It came with the car I got from him when he passed away.”

(Who knows how long he’d been parking in handicapped spaces based on his father’s tag. I asked if he had or needed one of his own, but he said it’d “be more bother” go to a doctor to get his own tag than to just pay the $500 ticket, which is what he did.)

I was walking into town for some errands when a man ran up to me.

“Do you have a mobile phone?” he asked.

He didn’t look like a mugger, so I assented. He led me over to an elderly lady and told me she had fallen down; he’d helped her up, but then she’d fallen again and now couldn’t get up. She was conscious but obviously needed an ambulance.

I called an ambulance and then waited with her.

While I was on the phone, her neighbour came by, and she gave the neighbour her handbag to take home, which seemed a silly idea, but I was on the phone so I couldn’t stop her.

She was warm enough, and there were no signs of blood, so I decided the best thing to do was not to move her but keep her talking. I asked about her family and she told me she had two sons. One owned a pub and the other worked with the police. I wanted to try to contact her sons, but having given her handbag to her neighbour, she didn’t have their numbers. I realised that with the information she’d given me, I could find them myself.

First, I searched online for the pub. I called the number but got no answer, unsurprisingly, since it was morning. I left a message. Then I asked which police service the other son worked for, found the number, and called them. He wasn’t there, but I gave someone there my details and explained the situation. They asked for his mother’s first name to assure that I wasn’t making it up, and a few minutes later he called me back. I told him what had happened and let him talk to his mum for a bit. Then we rang off and continued waiting for the ambulance. When they came, I texted the son with which hospital they were taking her to. He thanked me for taking care of her and promised to let me know how she was.

I went on with my errand and didn’t hear from them. Once a couple of weeks had passed, I assumed that I would probably never know what happened to her. I often wondered about her but I changed phones and lost her son’s number.

Two years later, I got a phone call. It was her. She thanked me for my help, for calling her son, and for staying with her. She told me that she’d broken her hip that day and she’d had a lot of surgeries as a result, but she was doing well. I was crying my eyes out when I got off the phone, I was so pleased she was okay.

(I get off the bus and run into some British Heart Foundation volunteers offering free CPR training.)

BHF: “Hi there. Do you have eight minutes to learn how to save a life?”

Old Couple: “Oh, no, thanks, dear. We’ve lived enough already!”