Sunday, April 03, 2005

Surprised Good While Ordering Take Out

Tonight, my future son-in-law and I were hungry and decided to hit the local Mexican take-out.

"Wait a minute," he says, "I need to get my wallet."

"No, you don't," I tell him and we drive to the take-out.

We order our meals and watch them get bagged. The cashier rings up our order and I hand her my Discover card. Ordinarily, I'd use my MasterCard, but just this past Friday, some cyberscammer may have gotten my card number, a possibility that had caused me to close it out and secure a new card with a new number.

"I'm sorry," the cashier tells me, "we don't take Discover here."

I look into my wallet and find a grand total of six bucks, about half of what I need. Obviously, my future son-in-law can't help me: at my prompting, he left his wallet behind. I start to say, "I'm sorry. I guess we'll have to skip it...," when the cashier turns and asks for the manager. "Just a minute," she tells me.

The cashier explains my plight and the manager looks me over with a smile. "You seem like the trustworthy type," he tells me. "Just pay us back later."

We are incredulous. Later, I savor each bite.

Sometimes, I get caught up in the old syndrome of lamenting how rotten the world has gotten and then, like tonight at the Mexican take-out, the world surprises me good.

Tomorrow, I intend to go back to the Mexican place, not to order more take-out, but to pay. After all, they trusted me and I want to be worthy of that trust.

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