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March 29, 2005
Letter to the EditorProfessor grateful for hit-and-run accident after apologetic student steps forward
I would just like to thank the Oracle for printing my letter regarding the hit-and-run incident involving my car. I was angry and hurt at first, like many people would be if their vehicle were cruelly injured and then left at the scene of the crime, but it turns out I was completely mistaken in the character of the young man who had left a dent in my car. I had said that I could be a very forgiving person, but it turned out I am the one who should be grateful for the experience this accident afforded me.
Just hours after the Oracle’s Feb. 15 issue came out, I received a phone call from the nicest young man, a senior criminal justice major in the CLA.
He informed me that he was the one who had left my vehicle damaged, and wouldn’t you know it, he just didn’t have a single pen or pencil on him to leave any contact information for me at the time. Saying that he felt simply terrible about what had happened, he offered to take me out to dinner as part of an apology.
When he arrived to take me out, he brought an enormous bouquet of flowers with him and apologized profusely once more. We then made our way to the St. Paul Grill for a fabulous dinner of steak and shrimp.
When the dessert arrived (a delicious chocolate mousse soufflÄ), resting gently on top was an envelope with my name on it. I gingerly picked it up, not wanting to disturb the soufflÄ, and opened it to find a check made out for twice the amount it had cost to repair my car.
When I protested the check’s amount, the young man dismissed my protestations, saying, “Yeah, I know
I’m a college student, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life paying off student loans when I leave Hamline because the job market is crappy and I still don’t actually know what I want to do with my life. But I figure if there’s one thing I can take away from Hamline, it’s that the ‘do all the good you can’ stuff that people are always talking about. So I guess this is just my way of doing some good before I get sucked into the bitter, cynical lifestyle of a man desperately hunting for a job in a world full of chaos.”
Isn’t that just the nicest thing? I guess in retrospect, I should have known that someone would step up and admit that he was the one who hit my car. After all, in an atmosphere like Hamline’s, full of rhetoric about making the world a better place and being an activist, how could I have thought otherwise?
Kristen Norman-Major
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Management
Posted by msveum at March 29, 2005 01:21 PM
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