a good deed

"Hey dad."

I hadn't seen my dad in a while. He didn't live that far away, but we didn't have that much money, so getting there was still tough. It was about a forty minute drive.

"Hey Jack!"

We went for a walk along the canal. Idle chitchat mostly, pointing out any interesting animal I saw, discussing how he's been doing. He works at a cable factory, doing payroll or something. He was asked recently to put up a bunch of old cables that they stop making now on eBay to be sold. Instead, he decided to buy the cables all at once for himself so he could sell them for a profit later. I don't think he'll actually make any money doing this.

"See that girl?" he said to me. A plump woman just walked by us, with a fluffy white dog trotting ahead of her.

"Yea? what about her?"

"I saved her. But now she doesn't even say hello when I walk by."

"You saved her?"

"Well, her got locked out of her car up ahead over here a couple weeks ago. She asked me if I could help her, so I walked home and got a coat hanger and helped her jimmy her door open."

"That was nice of you."

"Yea, but she still doesn't say hello. She was nice when she needed something, but not now. Now I'm just some old guy who happens to walk on the same path as her. I'm nobody. It's like what I did doesn't even matter."

"But dad, you didn't say hi to her either."