Local Woman Stays Seated on Bench so Stranger Doesn’t Worry They Smell.

WINNIPEG, MB - Bethany Richards, 27 went for her routine walk through the park Tuesday morning, stopping only momentarily on a bench to tie her shoelace.

“I just wanted to sit down for a second”, Richards explains, “my shoelace was getting loose, so I sat on the bench tightened it up, and I was about to get back up and keep walking when a man I had never met before sat next to me on the bench with a newspaper”.

Richards, who had needed to pick up her son from daycare at 3:00pm stayed seated on the bench until 5:20pm as to not hurt the man's feelings. “I didn’t want him to think he smelled bad or anything” she continued.

When questioned, the man said he didn’t recall Bethany, and “wouldn’t have cared if she had left”, adding “it’s a public park bench, that’s what they are for”.

The man with the newspaper, Richards assures “did not smell bad”. He seemed well groomed and likely practiced good hygiene, but had she stood up, he could have got the wrong idea and “developed a complex”. “Some people can develop such unhealthy patterns of  thinking” Richard explains “and it’s my responsibility to shelter them from any sort of pain or discomfort. I have to. I can’t imagine what would happen if I didn’t. It would be horrible.”

Richards admits this is not the first time she has been caught in a situation like this before. Just last week she refused to exit the bus until someone else pulled the string, in an attempt not to “stress” the bus driver. Richards found herself 12 blocks from her intended stop: her son’s daycare.

“Oh, he doesn’t mind waiting.”