Good help is easy to find

It isn't every day in a girl's life that the rear wheel of her bicycle pops off-chain in mid-pedal at a random Southie corner when she's already 20 minutes late for work.

It isn't every day, either, at that random corner, that a contractor (about her age) will be sitting in his van waiting for a job to start when he sees the girl's bike malfunction and, by the time she has flipped the frame on its end to investigate the chain disaster, come over to offer help, saying, "I was wondering how you were going to fix that without getting totally dirty." And then take over and completely fix it, blackening his hands.

And who knew that while the girl watched random contractor at random corner fixing her bike not a minute after it malfunctioned, a second man (about her age) would walk down the cross street and stop to say, "You got that under control? Do you need any help?" Followed by another random contractor (about her age) in black pick-up pulling over to ask the same question. Who would, upon hearing assurances that all was well, yell out his window "Do you need anything to wipe your hands with? I have this whole stack of napkins here...."

Followed, then, by a fourth man (about her age), walking a nervous Chihuahua, who stopped as the girl reassembled herself for the bike ride to work and said, "Hey! How's it going?"

Seems like my key to meeting folks in the hood is to have something go wrong.

Thanks, gentlemen of Southie.