savvy 5: Intention (a true story)

\in-ˈten(t)-shən\

Date: 14th century

"An agent's intention in performing an action is their specific purpose in doing so, the end or goal they aim at, or intend to accomplish. Whether an action is successful or unsuccessful depends at least on whether the intended result was brought about. Other consequences of someone's acting are called unintentional." (Wikipedia)

March 8, 2008. A car sits in an alley way, right front tire spinning on a thin sheet of ice. A woman emerges from the car, hoping to determine which tire is spinning and what she can do about it. Across the street, another woman notices, and decides that she can be of help. This other woman (hereafter referred to as "Ohmygodthatwasme" or OMGTWM, approaches, tagging along behind her three pre-pubescent girls pulling toboggans from the park. OMGTWM offers to help. She feels simultaneously gracious and cocky, having helped many a stranded driver during the foregoing three months of unprecedented city snow. She asks, "Does this window go down? Because I could push you out, if it did...." Gamely, the stuck woman says, "yes." She walks over the passenger side beside OMGTWM, full of gratitude.
"It's frozen shut," OMGTWM says.
"Oh."
OMGTWM tries again, and fails to get the window down with push-button on the door. She wonders aloud if she has the wrong button, so presses the one beside the window.
"Did I just lock your car?" OMGTWM asks.
"No," the stuck woman answers.
"Oh, Good," OMGTWM says. She goes on to say something like, "Phew, that would be awful, because your car is running, and blocking the alley way."
The stuck woman returns to the driver's side to slide across and help the window down. The handle clicks. The door does not budge. She looks at OMGTWM, who cocks her head slightly to the side, in a distinctive moment of utter idiocy. She doesn't yet know... and then she does.
"Oh my god," the stuck woman says. "What am I going to do?" The expression on the stuck woman's face could best be described as a combination of bewilderment and horror. Both women turn to look at the little white car, humming merrily, all closed up onto itself.
Thinking fast, heat rising up her spine, OMGTWM starts to walk away, talking non-stop as she does so. She asks the stuck woman if she has a cell phone (answer, yes, it's locked in the car), and whether she's a member of CAA ( No). And then, trailing three pre-pubescent girls with sleds they are begging to take home on their own, a safe distance from her, OMGTWM walks into the perfectly adorable cafe at the corner and says, to the assembled group of stroller-pushing mummies and daddies, "Does anyone here know how to break into a car?" For a moment, the cafe is oddly quiet, and OMGTWM hears a smear of slush splash off of a long cashmere coat onto the tile floor.
"Electric locks?" a man asks.
"Yes," OMGTWM replies, suddenly hopeful, thinking this is going to be slightly less mortifying and strung-out than originally imagined.
"No," the man says.
"I'm sure she'll understand," The man's wife says. "You were trying to help."
The girls and their sleds remain outside throughout, rehearsing a cigarette break. They walk a safe distance behind OMGTWM as she returns to her home, and stay clear as she explains to her husband, and, heart racing, cell phone in hand, heads back to the alley.

In the end, OMGTWM made good. She paid for the car thief, who arrived before CAA, in a beater car with thread-bare tires and broke into the Hyundai in fewer than 45 seconds. Both women laughed. The forgiving one, and ..... the one with good intentions.