Article June 9, 2014 Issue

Help when you need it

George Zucker

Originally appeared as a Web Original on May 12, 2014

Have you ever faced a rough patch in which everything seemed to go wrong, but was unexpectedly resolved, and you thought, “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have been so upset”? My wife and I had a similar experience early one winter morning.

We were late for an appointment, and our car doors wouldn’t unlock. The electrical system had frozen in the bitter cold. With some difficulty, we opened the doors manually, but there was only mute silence when we turned the ignition key. A friend’s jump start got the engine going, but also triggered the car’s anti-theft alarm. We couldn’t shut off the blowing horn. Awakened neighbors looked out from their windows.

“Why does everything have to be so hard?” my wife lamented.

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