Two actions: One heartwarming, one humorous

Much, perhaps most, of what I read on Facebook makes me wonder why I spend any time there. So, I have been spending considerably less time reading or posting on FB, but now and then I encounter something that I find particularly interesting. Such was the case today with two postings I read.

One post was a heartwarming story about the generosity of an 8-year-old boy named Wyatt Erber. He spent the entire summer participating in a local bank’s scavenger hunt contest, which had a top prize of $1,000. You guessed it. Wyatt won the prize.

Guesses might be numerous and varied as to what he would do with the money. In today’s me-oriented society and with the emphasis young people are taught to place on self, one might guess that Wyatt would want a fancy new bicycle, or an expensive smart phone with loads of apps, or a plasma TV, or the latest iPad.

Not so. The lad’s immediate response was to give the entire $1,000 check to his 2-year-old neighbor, Cara Kielty, so she could use the money to pay for treatment for her leukemia. He asked Cara’s mom how much chemo the $1,000 would buy.

“I didn’t know what I would do with $1,000,” Wyatt said, “but I knew what they could do.”

Awesome! My hat’s off to Wyatt Erber for a thoughtful and grand gesture.

While the second posting was not as much of a feel-good story, it did give me a chuckle.

The posting, which appears to be a newspaper clipping, is the story of an incident in Montana. About 3 a.m. on a very cold morning, Montana State Trooper Allan Nixon responded to a call about a car off the shoulder of the road outside Great Falls. He found the auto stuck in the deep snow with its engine still running. The trooper pulled up behind the car and turned on his emergency lights. He walked to the driver’s side door and inside the car he saw an older man passed out behind the wheel and a nearly empty vodka bottle on the seat.

Trooper Nixon tapped on the window and the driver awoke. Seeing the emergency lights flashing in his car’s rearview mirror and a trooper standing next to his car, the man panicked. He jerked the gearshift into drive and hit the gas. The speedometer quickly raced up to 50 mph, but the car was not moving. Stuck in the snow, it just remained in place with the wheels spinning.

I love Trooper Nixon’s sense of humor. He began running in place next to the stationary car. Looking at his speedometer reading 50 mph, the driver apparently was freaked out that the trooper was keeping up with him. After about 30 seconds, Trooper Nixon yelled, “Pull over!” The man nodded, turned the wheel and killed the motor. Needless to say, he was arrested.

Somewhere today there may be a man still amazed that a trooper could run so fast.

I don’t have any immediate plans to be in Montana any time soon; but, I ever go there again, I would like to meet Trooper Nixon and thank him for giving me a chuckle today. What a great sense of humor he must have.