Grace and the Green Party

I was out last night celebrating the 30th birthday of a friend.  We started the night at a Qdoba.  For those of you around the St. Louis area last night, you know we received an unusually large snow storm for this time of year.  At the Qdoba, there was a woman frantically trying to call someone to have them pick them up.  She was in need of getting to a bus stop about 5 miles away, and she had several bags with her.  She kept on asking people if they were going a certain direction, but everyone in my group was heading the other direction.  Despite this, I felt sorry for this woman and I offered to give her a ride to her bus stop.  Her name was Grace.  I helped her and her bags out to the car.  Mind you, I've never picked up a hitchhiker or offered anyone a ride like this.  I think it was the weather and the frantic situation this woman was in that caused me to do it.  After helping her with her bags, we started towards the bus stop.  She asked me about my life and my background and I told her about wanting to go to med school and my past as a teacher, IT director, and part time professor.  I must have said something that made her think I was wise for my age because she asked me what she should do about getting her daughter to go to school instead of doing what she was doing with her life.  Having already mentioning I went to McKendree, she said she almost went to a speaker series once at McKendree and I told her that I had heard of that speaker series while I was listening to NPR one day.  She took it to mean the NPR reference must mean that I was of a certain political bend and started telling me all about how she was a member of the Green Party.  Now, we all come to our political conclusions for one reason or another, but to the best of my recollection, this was the first time I had a chance to talk to someone in the Green Party. She seemed to harbor many of the political beliefs that were popularized by the 1960s counter culture movement.  We did manage to get her to her bus stop about one minute before the bus arrived, and I felt like I had helped a person in need.