Over The Guardrail

I saw an old woman frantically waving at traffic. Stopping, I discovered that she and her husband had been busily picking up litter along the highway when he had stumbled and fallen down a steep bluff. Quickly I jumped over the guardrail and headed down to where I saw only straw hat and rear end sticking out of the brambles.

“Surely,” I thought, “the old man is a goner,” face down in the briars and weeds as he was. But Ottis (that was his name, pronounced “Aught-iss” not “Oh-tiss” as his wife corrected me a couple of times), was alive if not quite well.

With the help of an off-duty police officer and the quickly arriving paramedics, Ottis was soon getting the care he needed – along with plenty of simultaneous petting and chastising from his wife, done in a way that can only be achieved by a couple who…