Thursday, September 24, 2015

The Curious Cases of Judi and Jean





Two more of my friends have just made that seismic shift of moving on from the familiar, something I’ve written about before. A Change for the Better


Judi and her husband moved less than five miles, but left behind the house where they’d raised their son. Jean’s move took her from Western Massachusetts all the way to Martha’s Vineyard, a new start in a place that had already felt like home to her for years.


          These women have never met. Judi is a retired high school language teacher from a large Italian family and is married to an Irishman with a wonderful “Bahstan” accent. Jean is single, grew up locally, but has lived all over the country, and is an accomplished writer of eighteen novels. http://www.jeanstone.com/books.htm


          And yet they have more in common than just a friendship with me. 


          Judi’s roller coaster summer was filled with all the details of selling a house she’d lived in for over twenty years, and condensing her life down to a condo. They were lucky that their house sold quickly, and even luckier that they found the condo they were hoping for, but they ended up in residential limbo for two weeks. Fortunately, their son lived nearby and figured it might be bad form to have Mom and Dad sleeping on the sidewalk. Still, they were without a legal address. 


          Not a good time to lose your wallet, but that’s what happened to Judi.  And even if by some complete miracle anyone turned in her wallet (a laughable idea in this day and age), there was no address to indicate her true location. So, to add to all the other delights of moving, she also spent an appreciable amount of time on the phone canceling cards and acquiring a new driver’s license. 
 

          One week after Judi's experience, Jean sold her condo here and packed up for the Vineyard, where she settled into her new digs. But only a week had gone by before Jean lost her purse somewhere in Edgartown, and of course it was chock-full of credit cards, keys, and glasses.


          Miraculously, Judi’s wallet was found by some very honest employees of a dollar store and turned in to her former town’s police station, complete with credit cards and money. 


          Jean’s handbag was brought to her friends’ home – friends whose full names and address were nowhere in the purse – by a young couple who must have spent their evening in detective work rather than a romantic stroll on the beach.


          It’s good to still be able to depend on the kindness honesty of strangers.

9 comments:

  1. Those are truly wonderful stories about the honesty (AND kindness) of strangers. There are plenty of us still around, it seems. :-)

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  2. Amazing! It's good to know there are still good people out there.

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  3. I like to think that's what we all would do. I bet if you canvassed your readers you would find many who have been on either side of this dilemma. Kudos both to the Dollar Store and the sweet young couple.

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  4. How lovely.
    Somedays I despair of our race, and then I hear stories like these, and regain hope.

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  5. Such tales restore my sagging faith in humanity...Perhaps you should introduce these two women?

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  6. A neat story that parallels two different friends.

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  7. Nice to know the honesty of strangers still exists. Listening to the news these days, you begin to wonder.

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  8. It always seems unlikely that these sorts of things would happen, and yet I read similar stories fairly often! Most people really are far more honest than we give them credit for being.

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  9. Aw, I love it when people behave like I am pretty much convinced most of us would. I do think the majority of us are honest. Good to have that belief reinforced.Too bad Judi went to all the trouble to cancel everything but she had no choice.

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