Craziest Things

I was sitting on the shuttle bus last week heading back to the parking deck after work. I always use the time to check my email or bank account and sometimes texts. I had gotten an email telling me there had been a comment posted on one of my blogs, it read:

Hello Kelly, I read and thoroughly enjoyed your story about "Moses." And this is how crazy it gets...Moses and I work together in a location not far from the airport. So after reading your story together, I told him that I will reach out to you so that you two could meet again. Please let me know how best to reach you. He asked that I can give you his number but I do not think it is appropriate to do so in this blog comments section. Thanks.




It had been posted about a blog I had written in 2014 well before ever starting to work at the airport. I was still working at Mama Lucia's here in Newnan. I had to look up the old blog because I've written well over 1,400. Then it all made sense! This is what I had written on March 15, 2014.

                                                        "How Crazy Is This?"

So I'm working on Saturday night at the restaurant. It's hopping and so am I. I started off with a bachelorette  party of fourteen at four and keep running all through the dinner shift. I had four older folks sit at one of my tables around seven.  Two married couples most probably in their late sixties. One of the men looked familiar but when you've been waiting tables in the same general area for over thirty years that's usually it. I asked him where he worked and replied he was retired from the GBI (that would be the Georgia Bureau of Investigation) but also said he has eaten in our restaurant often.

So begins another crazy server story...

I asked if he had worked for them in the early eighties? Yep, he did.

So this is me talking to my customer:

"I know this sounds crazy but there was a restaurant back in the seventies and eighties called "Steak and Ale." I worked at the one on Virginia Ave by the old Atlanta airport in 1980. We wore short plaid skirts with low cut peasant blouses and black tights. I was on the way to work one day and had a flat tire on the ramp of the interstate. I was only twenty at the time so thought nothing about getting out of the car in my uniform to change a tire, or at least attempt to. Cars whizzed by but finally a dark sedan pulled over behind me. A black man in suit and tie got out. He told me to move over out of the way and proceeded to change my tire for me. He was such a nice guy but chastised me for getting out of the car in my current attire. When  finished with the tire he handed me his GBI business card and said if I ever needed help to call him. Sounds crazy but after thirty four years still remember his name, maybe you knew him. His name was Moses Ector."

My customer looked quite surprised and said "In fact I do know him, he's the reason my wife and I are married. He introduced us over thirty five years ago."

Number one, how crazy is it I remember a GBI agent's name after all this time and number two, how crazy is it I would be waiting on his friend thirty four years later and this conversation come up?

His wife had gone to the restroom but when she came back was just as shocked as us!

She even gave me more enlightenment about my flat tire hero. Yes, they were still friends with him. He had grown up in the small town of Hogansville about ten miles south of where we live. He was raised by a white couple who had literally found him abandoned in a wicker basket. They name him Moses, Touche'!

How ironic that our paths crossed yet again tonight, thirty four years later. I asked if he still stayed in touch with Moses and he does. I told him to ask Moses if he remembered helping a fair young maiden on the interstate one day in 1980!

I have a lot of aches and pains but the one good thing I have left is an excellent memory.

It is truly a small, small world. It's a world full of rage , dishonesty and despair but if you try hard enough can always find a silver lining...I found one tonight. I hope this couple comes back in to eat one night along with their friend; my flat tire hero, Moses. Wouldn't that be really cool?

Till next time... COTTON

I was blown away that a blog written well over two years ago and put on the Internet had been found and shown to the person I'd written about, never thinking in a million years that person would ever see it.

The person who contacted me was tagged  "Harry The Reader" and can only guess he randomly reads blogs and somehow came across mine. I sent "Harry The Reader" my personal email address  and hope he gets back in touch with me, as  would absolutely love  to meet my knight in shining armour again.

I actually kept the GBI business card for well over ten years in my wallet. My little cyber snoop of a daughter googled my hero and appears after retiring with the GBI was police chief in his former (or maybe still) hometown for a while and also did some teaching.

Tim would have a fit if he knew about this. He worries about me putting my life out there for everyone to read but I don't. He kinda freaked the time I came home from working at the airport, maybe my first month there and told him someone had asked to be seated in my section because they read my blog. I had never met the person but found out had gone to a neighboring high school in the town I grew up and had many mutual friends. We had a delightful conversation before he took off for Greece and was an awesome guy, happily married just simply wanted to stop by and meet me because had followed my story and admired my will to survive. Tim worries about me which in return makes me feel secure enough.

I've had almost 156,000 hits on my blog from people all over the world and even right around the corner. It's what I want to do when I grow up. I want to be a writer and writers want to be read.

There's another reader from Ireland I've never met who follows my blog and commented was going to stop by when traveling through the airport this next month.

You can't live in fear of people you've simply never met, especially if you're a good person. Good things happen to good people and a lot of good things have happened to me. A lot of bad things have happened as well but lucky for me, is water under the bridge.

I look  through my email every day, waiting to hear back from Harry The Reader and think it's pretty awesome  all of this happened because I started a blog.

Till next time...COTTON