Describe a time when you have helped an elderly person.

I was a teenager, about 15, when I met Crazy Mary. Everyone knew her as crazy Mary in the neighborhood except for me. This was our first meeting. I was walking the Avenue with some friends when Crazy Mary came out of the Park, "Oh please" she said "Please won't one of you young people help me?" The other kids who were already acquainted with Mary wanted nothing to do with her. They laughed and giggled and joked about how Mary was somewhere between 70 and death. Still, I couldn't turn away. She had this pleading look in her tired brown eyes and she was even shorter than me (I was 5'2) so she seemed pathetic and needy.

I followed Mary into the park and to the other side. Her house was just on the other side of the fence.

"what do you need help with?" I asked.

"Please get rid of that dead bird in my shrubs".

"There's a dead bird in your shrubs?"

"Yes, don't you see it?" she asked walking to her house "I'll get you something to put it in"

Of course by now I wished I had followed my friends and not gotten myself involved with this woman. I couldn't find a dead bird. I looked on her shrubs, in her shrubs and under her shrubs, no dead bird. Finally Mary said puzzled "I could have sworn there was a dead bird in there....do you think a cat got to it?"

I shook my head "I really don't know Mary".

I ended up trimming Mary's shrubs and helping her put out her garbage. I must have been there a good hour at least before I finally left.

A week or two later I ran into Crazy Mary on the Avenue again and she didn't even recognize me. That was okay though I knew I had done what I thought was right. Maybe she just needed someone to care about her for an hour or so of her life.