Sometimes I Think I Care Too Much

Has this ever happened to you? You decide to help someone or to help protect somebody from getting injured and it takes way longer then you thought it would.

First, let me tell you a background story so this will make more sense. When I was a kid playing little league in my hometown of Carbondale Pennsylvania, one of the practice fields was behind what was then the General Hospital.

Some people dumped garbage back in the woods behind home plate. During practice, I was catching for batting practice and a ball got behind me and behind the makeshift backstop of a mattress propped up with tires.

After my teammate was done batting and before the next guy stepped into the batter's box, I went behind the backstop to look for the ball. I found it and was keeping my eye on so I wouldn't lose it. As I was walking towards it I felt a pop in my foot and  I felt a sharp pain. It turned out I had stepped on a sharp piece of glass.

It was an old broken half gallon of milk. The way it was positioned on the ground, with the sharp point straight up in the air, it went right through my right baseball cleat. That was the end of practice for me for the day and I had to get stitches in my foot.

This Saturday night, after Chris and I got back from going to see the college football game at Mansfield, we stopped at Walmart in Vestal to pick up stuff for football at our house on Sunday.

We were making Rubens for all our friends that come over on Sunday. So we got the Russian dressing and the corned beef and all that was left was the sauerkraut. Chris crouched down to get two jars of sauerkraut off the bottom shelf and one of them slipped out of her hand and smashed on the floor.

I decided I would stand there to make sure nobody stepped on the broken glass, having flashbacks to that day at Little League practice, and Chris set out to find somebody from the store to tell them so they can clean it up before someone got hurt.

She walked around the store for a good 10 minutes and couldn't find an employee. While she was gone I decided to call the store and report the broken glass while I was standing in the aisle. I heard them call over the p.a. system for someone to go clean up broken glass in aisle 11.

Another five minutes or so went by and Chris was still walking around the store looking for someone to tell about the danger that was lurking on the floor. After another five minutes passed, we finally saw a few employees walk by the aisle and Chris ran to catch them.

Finally, one of the employees came and stood there and relieved me of my duty of warning shoppers about the glass. I'm glad no one got hurt, but I probably wasted a half hour of my life trying to keep strangers from going through the same pain I did as a young boy.

Yeah, sometimes I think I care too much.