It wasn’t difficult to get a ride. Most of the public vehicles were surprisingly empty. There were only a few passengers; less than 10 to be exact. Maybe the regular commuters preferred to take a cab for convenience. One of the passengers, a stocky medium-built curly-haired man, requested that the driver pass by a mall terminal and literally begged to be driven as close as possible to the covered walk. Obviously, he didn’t want to get drenched. When the guy finally got down, all the passengers laughed out loud and one lady even pointed out that the guy was too feminine for his looks. It was still raining hard and the vehicle left the terminal to pass through its usual route going to the mall’s entrance which was already flooded. “Drainage problem,” the passenger seated in front of me told her seatmate. All of a sudden, the lady beside me said, “Please stop. I need to get down.”
Why didn’t she get down at the terminal when there was a covered walk going to the mall? I’m sure that’s what everybody had in mind. Apparently, she didn’t anticipate the flood. The lady got down and was practically wading on the flood water on her way to the mall.
I could only shake my head. If she only got down at the terminal with that stocky medium-built curly-haired man who risked humiliation for him not to get soaked in the rain, then she could have walked to the mall with covered roof instead of being totally drenched.
This is how we let opportunities go because we want a shorter way - or because we think there is a shorter way. The lady didn’t want to do a 5-minute walk; she wanted to be right at the mall entrance for a short cut.
But not all short-cuts are really short. Many of them are disastrous…
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