Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
I was just south of Reed City, Michigan on US 131 at around 3:45 p.m. today when I spotted a red early 1990s model Escort by the side of the road and a child playing out in the snow. It looked odd so I stopped the Civic and checked on the situation.
I found a boy who couldn’t have been older than 10. I asked him how he was doing and told him my name was Micah but didn’t ask any more questions for fear of coming across badly. He told me that he had been riding with his mom when their car ran out and gas and his mom told him to wait there while she went to get fuel. The boy only had tennis shoes on and I tried to coax him to get out of the snow but he wouldn’t leave. We talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular, as I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t comfortable leaving but our conversation was also awkward since quite reasonably the boy was leery of me.
Finally a pick-up truck pulled up and the boy’s mom was dropped off. She was carrying a contained of gasoline.
“What are you doing?” she asked me.
“Uh…” I stuttered without really answering.
“Todd is safe,” she blurted out before opening the nozzle on her gas tank.
I walked to my vehicle and went about my way. posted by micah holmquist at 2/12/2003 10:26:00 PM
