Friday morning three different things happened to me. Had not one of those things happened exactly as it did, I would not have the following anecdote to relay. At each point, I made choices that, when combined, created the story. It began by me picking up trash and ended with someone buying me breakfast.
You see the above trash can. That's snow from the remnants of a storm. The wind was blowing south and the snow stuck to the can. What you don't see is the recycle can that had blown over. You also don't see various pieces of trash that blew out of the can and down the street. I left the house to go for a McDonald's breakfast run. I saw the trash and picked it up. It took some time, but I didn't want to have our trash in everyone else's yard.
When that was done, I climbed into the van and headed the mile south to our local McD's. It's a Drive-Thru only restaurant with two drive-thru lanes. Thus began the eternal question...which lane? I usually chose the outside lane because, if for whatever reason I want to leave, the outside lane gives me that option. On this morning, there were three cars in the inside lane, and two trucks in the outside lane--each truck had a long trailer behind it. I decided to follow the trucks. Sure, it might take longer...the shorter cars could sneak in before the longer trucks make the bend, but I thought...what the heck.
The first truck ordered and moved forward, then the second truck (with the longer trailer...) left. He wasn't in line at all.
Score!
I leap-frogged at least two cars. I ordered and snuck in behind the car ahead. Had I chose the inside lane, I'd be two cars behind, at least.
I pull up to Window #1 to pay and the attendant hands me the receipt. "You don't owe anything," he says. "The car ahead of you paid for yours."
Score, again!
You hear about cool things like that happening, and I should take more opportunities to do similar things for others. I thought it was such a nice gesture of the stranger ahead of me, I asked how much the bill was for the car behind me. He said, $2.14.
"I'll pay for him," I said.
As I drove away, I thought of all the things that had to happen exactly the way they did for me to have some nice person pay for my meal and for me to pay for someone else's. Had I not picked up trash, had I picked the other lane, had the truck before me left...it would have been some other person getting a free breakfast...
And I'd have a different blog post for today.
I'm grateful for little things like this--for happy coincidences that make life beautiful, or at least, more fun.
Serendipity!! :)
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