A short while ago I was driving across a somewhat barren section of Colorado. The road was straight as a rail for 50 miles and the traffic very light for it was early in the morning. As I drove along I came upon a car in the ditch. It was a fine automobile but it was hopelessly stuck in the deep sand in the shallow ditch. A young Air Force officer was standing beside the car. I stopped to give him a lift. I asked him how he happened to go off a road that was so straight and completely free from traffic. He smiled a little and seemed a bit embarrassed. It didn't make sense to me that this young officer whose job it was to fly a faster-than-sound aircraft should not be able to keep a car on a straight broad highway. After a little prodding he explained that a small white kitten had darted from the ditch right into the path of his car and that in his effort to miss the little animal he had ditched the car. Being a bit of a softy, a lump came to my throat and I said no more, but let me tell you this – when I let my passenger off at the Air Force Base I felt very close to this man. I wondered if as he continued his study of mass human destruction that day, he would appreciate the incongruity of the risk he took in ditching his car to save a small, white kitten.
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