Enrique

This evening, my son and I made a work-exchange deal: he would help me with the dishes for 10 minutes and in exchange, I would help him clean his room for 10 minutes. We both come away from a deal like this thinking we got the better end of the bargain since he hates cleaning his room but doesn't mind doing the dishes while I hate doing the dishes but don't mind tidying a room.

In an effort to make the dishes part a little more enjoyable, I announced we would listen to music. My son asked if he could pick what we listened to, which was fine. He picked the self-titled 1999 album by Enrique Iglesias.

This album is rather an anomaly in our music collection, but there is no other CD we have that so instantly transports me back in time. This album was quite recent when we acquired it in 2000 and every single time I hear it, I'm back in hot, sticky Alabama, almost 13 years ago to the day.

We here in Manitoba like to whine and complain about the heat and humidity we suffer in the first half of summer, but folks, let me tell you, we have nothing on Alabama in July. We had driven down from Kentucky to Alabama to see some new sights and to celebrate our second anniversary, but it was so hot – 104° F in the shade – and unbearably humid that we didn't see much: we would just dash from one air conditioned building to another. It didn't really matter what was inside, so long as it was cool.

We had camped close to Birmingham, AL for several days, but we had booked a B & B in another little town an hour or two north of there for our anniversary and headed there on July 4, Independence Day. We stopped at a roadside stop off the interstate to have our supper. We were unpacking our weiners and buns and my husband was firing up the camp stove when we couldn't help but notice another motorist in the parking lot. The well-dressed young man kept turning his key to start the ignition, but even I could tell he had already flooded the engine and it wasn't going to start any time soon. But he kept trying and trying. The young man was clearly agitated and worried about the lack of responsiveness in his very nice sports car. This was before the days of wide-spread cell phone use.

My bleeding heart went out to the poor guy because I have also been in situations where my car, though not nearly so classy, wouldn't start and I didn't know what to do. So I encouraged my husband, whom I felt was more qualified than I, to go help him. He didn't think he could help him with his car, but he did go over and talk to him.

It turned out this guy had been stuck at this roadside stop for 6 hours, and not one single person had offered to help him. My husband was the first person who had spoken to him all afternoon. As my husband suspected, after a cursory glance, he couldn't help him with the car, but we did offer him supper, which he gratefully accepted. So he sat there with us and ate our humble hot dogs. His relief that he wasn't alone with his problem was palpable. If he had been a girl, he would have cried.

After we were done eating, he and my husband went to look at his car again. A couple guys trying to solve a problem seems to be a magnet for other guys to come and offer advice, and in a few minutes a trucker come over to see if he could help. Since it was a holiday, no businesses around were open, but the trucker offered to take him to the next town or city where he could make arrangements for his car.

Pleased that some solution had been reached, we packed up our supper and were getting ready to leave, when the young man grabbed a CD from his collection and thrust it at us, urging us to take it as a token of his deep gratitude, though those weren't the exact words he used.

And so we were introduced to Enrique Iglesias, who does not look dissimilar from the young man who gave us that CD. And I always think of him when I listen to that CD and I think of how such a small gesture of kindness so completely altered the story – for him and for us.