The Extra Mile

 

I have this friend that I met about a month ago. Loves going to places, meeting people,  trying to find out the stories hidden behind those places and people;

Simple, sweet, protective, helpful..

Let me stress a little more on that last adjective.

About a week ago, our entire group of friends met up to practice for an event -  all of us jumping in excited circles around the 7 feet deep, empty pool at the society clubhouse.

And on one edge of the pool was a frog, camouflaged in the dirt and dried leaves in a corner.

While we were all practicing, I noticed my friend's gaze fixed on the frog.

It was stuck and was incessantly trying to take a leap out of the pool that was far beyond its reach.

Our rehearsal went on for a good half an hour and for every minute of that span, he kept watching the frog and kept trying to go near it.

"Hey, what's up? Is everything good?"

"He's stuck," he said with a gloomy, helpless simper.

"Let's take him out then," I said to him.

Just then, one of our friends shouted from behind us, "Let it be, you two. It's fine in that corner."

We looked at each other.

Even I couldn't stop looking at that corner. By this time, some of the others in our group were already trying to ambuscade it.

"Stop it, you all!" They looked at me and then went back to practice. And so did my friend and I.

As soon as our practice reached its end, he came to me.

"Do you have a piece of paper with which I can take it out?"

"Yes! Hold on a second, I'll get it right away."

I ran to my purse and tore out the piece of paper. He rushed to the pool edge, picked up the frog and placed it outside the pool.

All of us got out of the pool too. I smiled, looking at the frog as it looked back at me lovingly.

Suddenly, we heard a kid screaming in the background.

"Pass the football to me!"

Some children had climbed over the clubhouse wall to play in the pool we had just climbed out of; and before we could look back, one of them had kicked the frog back inside.

"No!" I shouted from behind. All of us were already out of the pool.

My friend and I ran towards the edge.

"Leave it alone, you two," one of our other friends urged.

"But..."

"Just leave it there."

My friend ran up to me and quietly whispered so that no one else could hear.

"Do one thing, Mariya, take my bag and stuff outside with you and go with the others. I'll take him out and then join you."

"Yes .. go, quick"

The rest of us walked back out.

Two minutes later, he ran back outside the club house and joined us.

"Did you take it out?" I asked him.

"Yes, and I left it in the tall grass so that the kids wouldn't kick him back in."

We looked at each other with gleaming eyes.

I had known my entire group of friends for only a month but I seemed to feel close to only this one friend of mine.

I always wondered why, and that was the day I understood the reason.

He was different. When no one was willing to help the frog, he did.

When it wasn't possible for anyone to drop the parcel 15 kilometres, he travelled to do it.

He always stayed early to help prepare. He always stayed back late to help wrap up.

One day, he took the longer route in the rain simply to show me those places embedded with his childhood memories.

When it was not possible for me to travel long distances, he traveled that extra mile to drop me home.

And it was that extra mile that made me closer to him than I was with anyone else.

Here's to those people who travel that extra mile. Thank you.💓