The Local Pony Express Is Not Just for Letters

I don't hear from The Pony every day. I figure he's busy with his job, and when he gets a precious day off, there are surely more things he'd like to do that talk to me. So unless the weather is bad and I feel a need to check on him, I let The Pony be the one to initiate communications. Sometimes he'll text me in the morning before work. Saturday, I got an unusual text at 9:30.

"I was 20 minutes late for work today because I'm a good person with a bleeding heart and I did my good deed for the day."

"?"

"The 20 minutes late is because my neighbor flagged me down looking desperate as I was leaving, and asked if there was any way I could take her to Walmart because her kids weren't answering and she needed something medical. She said it was fine if I took her and dropped her off, so I did, and thus, 20 minutes late. Neighbor, as in older lady that needs one of those walker chairs to go places and can't move well and doesn't have a car. The little house across the street."

"You did the right thing. Any problems at work? A stern talking-to? A warning?"

"No. I warned the manager. Well, 'A' manager. Turns out she's the one closing today, not opening, but since nobody said anything and she was answering I assume she let the ones here know before I got here."

"Hope that lady gets a ride home."

"Yeah. Hopefully she gets what she needed from there and then the taxi place answers or one of her kids does. But I made sure she was okay with me just dropping her off. And she said she was."

"Somebody there will help her, I bet. I'm proud of you. You are one of those hero mail persons, helping elderlies, even if she wasn't on your route."

"I just feel bad I couldn't do more."

"On a day off you could have, but you did what you could."

"Yeah. I didn't pry after she said it was an important medical thing. She didn't say it was urgent or a major emergency thing, just that she needed to get to the Walmart pharmacy for things. And on the ride she mentioned that she's probably moving in the next few days and it might be to one of the assisted living things where you can leave. She sounded so defeatist, like she might end up in a hospital fairly soon. And she offered gas money and I couldn't take that just for a ride to Walmart."

"Aww."

"I feel so bad for her. :( "

"At least you got her to the pharmacy."

Huh. Seems like only yesterday our little Pony was taking that FAFSA interest survey for college, answering that he didn't really care about helping people...