Three Angels And A Gas Can

Sometimes, the impulse to help is stronger than any second thoughts

Kristin Morrison was pulling off the freeway one afternoon when she spotted a man and a young boy walking along the side of the road. “There was a truck parked on the side of the off-ramp,” she remembers. “The man had a gas can, and he was walking with his son, who was maybe 10, and my first thought was, I want to help them. And then I thought, I don’t know him and he’s a strange guy, I don’t know if I should.”

Morrison let her altruistic impulse dictate her next move. “I checked in with myself and I thought, you know what, I’m going to help. He’s got a kid, it’s fine. And it’s kind of dangerous for him to be walking on the off-ramp.”

Morrison pulled over and offered the pair a ride. “He was so grateful,” she told Good Turns recently. “The kid got in the back, and he got in the front, and I just drove them to a gas station.”

“I felt really happy the rest of the day. I had helped two humans have a better day.”

The man struck up a conversation on the short ride to the gas station. “While I was driving, I thought he said, ‘You’re such an angel,'” Morrison reports. But the man gave her a funny look when she said thank you, so she asked him what he had just said. “My name is Angel,” he repeated.

Morrison laughs as she recalls the misunderstanding. “And his son’s name was Gabriel,” she said, “so I was in the car with two angels.” (If you ask us, there were actually three angels in the car that day.)

“We stopped at the gas station and he said, ‘You know, you can just let us off,’ but I said, ‘No, I’m going to just take you as close as I can,'” Morrison said. Morrison chatted with Gabriel as his father was filling up the gas can. “He told me he was going to a new school. I think they had moved recently.” Morrison asked if he was nervous about it, which he was. “I said it’s kinda scary starting something new, and I told him, ‘You’re going to make so many wonderful new friends.’ I just tried to support him and let him know it would be okay.”

Morrison had helped to make things okay on that particular afternoon. But it’s not like this was something she made a habit of. “Absolutely not, it’s not my thing,” she says. “But I was checking in with my gut and it felt like it was all right. I don’t know if I would have picked him up if it was just him, but he had a kid and they were holding hands and there was an obvious connection between the two of them.”

As she dropped the pair off, Angel told her that he was a house painter and that she should look him up if she ever needed any help, but Morrison, a business coach, reports that she has already gotten everything she needed out of the exchange. “I just felt like I got so much from it,” she said. “I felt really happy the rest of the day. I had helped two humans have a better day. He was so thrilled that I helped. It’s a funny sort of cliche that when you give something to somebody, you get the gift. Talking about it now is a similar feeling to what I felt after I helped him, that feeling of happiness and joy.”

Extending that feeling is important to Morrison. “It’s so important to begin to look at the world as a supporting, loving place,” she says. “It’s what we focus on. One thing I remember is that I stopped as I was getting off the off-ramp, and the people behind me wanted to go, but they were so patient, they saw what was happening. The lady behind me was beaming, I saw her smile.”

Morrison was impressed by how supportive the line of cars behind her was. “Nobody honked,” she said.

Posted May 18, 2018