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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>910 words<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a name="_Hlk67331980">At your Service<o:p></o:p></a></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk67331980'>By DeAnna Quietwater Noriega<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk67331980'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk67331980'>When I was a college student, my best friend Annie and I took a bus to San Francisco to Christmas shop. We decided to take a lunch break at a cafeteria style venue. Annie scanned the restaurant for an empty table. She directed me to one near the buffet line. I settled my guide dog beneath it, clipped her leash to one of its legs and placed my bags between her front paws. We hurried to fill our trays, observed by a busboy clearing dirty dishes. When we had made our selections and were trying to decide how to carry two trays back to our seats; the bus boy stepped up and bowed, offered me an elbow, “At your service Miss,” he quipped. Scooping up my tray, he escorted me back to my seat with a smile.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Throughout my life journey, I have met many wonderful strangers who seem to take real enjoyment in offering me assistance. Yesterday, I was in Jefferson City helping with the Missouri Council of the Blind present their views on two pending pieces of legislation. I had been assigned my own state senator and seven members of the Missouri representatives on the house side. I helped my roommate, a woman five years older than I get up, dress and attend the breakfast before going over to the state capital building. She was given two state senators and five members of the house to visit. She hadn’t made any appointments. I noticed that her house members were in offices with room numbers followed by letter designations. Since these indicated to me that these might be up narrow steep metal staircases to mezzanines built in large high-ceilinged rooms, I offered her a trade for some of my list to reduce her list to five visits and adding two more to my list. She agreed, but when she was ready to leave, she changed her mind and asked if I could do them all. She felt unwell. After I arranged a late check-out, I was trying to touch type the address of my hotel into the proper field in my phone to summon an Uber car. An acquaintance’s husband recognized me and asked what I was doing. When he heard, I was trying to setup a ride to the capital, he offered to take me and my dog with the two blind people he was driving there. Robert had never been part of a legislative day. Since he needed to find a place on the street to park his extended cab pickup truck. He dropped me in what he thought was the back entrance where I could have taken an elevator to the offices level. I took the elevator to the third floor to begin looking for offices, only to find myself still in a parking garage, not the capital building. I heard a car looking for a parking spot and followed it. When the young man driving the car stopped and rolled down a window, I explained I was lost. He took me to another elevator and we crossed the street where I met up with My friend Robert and his party and were given directions to a public access entrance. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We got separated when we got tangled up in a large gathering of children’s advocates holding a rally in the rotunda. A woman admired my dog and asked if I wanted a seat, but when she understood I needed to locate an exit into a main hall, she led me to one and even figured which direction I needed to go to reach my first appointment. There I met a legislative assistant who used to work for my house representative. She told me he was planning to run for the senate next fall and insisted on walking with us to my second appointment. Each subsequent office had someone willing to guide me to the next. I only got to talk with two legislators because the senate had done an all-night session and had only broken at seven in the morning. They had all left to get some sleep. Both house members were supportive of my positions. I managed to finish dropping off material in all 15 of the legislator’s offices on our combined lists by 11:30. At the last office, I asked the legislative assistant if she could direct me to the elevator that would take me to the basement level so I could walk out to the street through the parking garage I had originally meant to walk through under the capital. She said she really couldn’t because she was directionally challenged and her directions were likely to get me lost. Instead, she walked with me, waited for the elevator and escorted Flynn and I through the garage. She met a friend and stopped to talk to him when I ran into Robert and his party who were going to take a lunchbreak at a nearby restaurant. They offered to give me a lift back to the hotel. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>When I was young, I hated having people assume that that sweet little blind girl needed someone to take care of her. Now that I am transformed into that sweet little blind grandma, I am grateful when generous minded people go out of their way to offer help. As for Karen, the directionally challenged legislative assistant, she remembered me from previous visits to the capital to meet with my senator. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-ligatures:none'>DeAnna Quietwater Noriega<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-ligatures:none'>Cell: 573-544-3511<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-ligatures:none'>Email: <a href="mailto:dqnoriega@gmail.com"><span style='color:#0563C1'>dqnoriega@gmail.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-ligatures:none'>Author of <i>Fifty Years of Walking with Friends<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='mso-ligatures:none'>https://www.dldbooks.com/dqnoriega/</span></i><span style='mso-ligatures:none'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>