Overflow

I was driving down the street drinking this Yoo-hoo — kind of hard to admit but it’s an occasional guilty pleasure — and I noticed this spot on the label that announced proudly, “Same Great Taste!” Same great taste? As What? The regular Yoo-hoo? I thought I was drinking a regular Yoo-hoo. Maybe they were trying to tell me that, though they cut corners by only giving me 15.5 oz instead of the 16 oz implied by the size of the bottle, they at least hadn’t cheapened the ingredients. I can still enjoy the same great artificial chocolate flavor — Same Great Taste! Reminds me of a cheap dollar-store Space Shuttle model I saw once. It was obvious the label was Japanese translated roughly into English and the label people had mistaken a disclaimer for a selling point. The label, in bold letters across the bottom corner of the box, splashed the message, “The Hatch Does Not Open!” Yes, I need a life.

I know Mighty Girl is the queen of the overheard snippet of amusing conversation, but I had a Mighty Girl moment the other night walking through the hospital parking garage. A mother and her teenage son were strolling out to their car which must’ve been near mine…

Mother: Sorry they had to catheterize you.
Teen Son: Yeah.
Mother: That must’ve been pretty painful.
Teen Son: Not too painful, just different
Mother: Different?
Teen Son: Yeah, it was an… um… interesting feeling.

So why, you ask, was I in a hospital parking garage? Petunia and Heidi were there. Seems Petunia had a fever, then one of her blood samples came back positive for some kind of nasty bacteria. Subsequent samples came back negative, though. But, by the time they figured that the original sample was mistakenly contaminated by hospital staff (Oops!) three days had gone by. What a waste of money and medical resources. If it were my insurance, I’d have protested. But Petunia has Medicare and Texas Childrens’ hospital is public, so I figure making them pay for their mistake would just be shuffling public money from one bucket to another. Not worth the energy that a protest would require.

In a time when the priest pedophilia scandals are straining my faith, I was blessed to read this story: Tijuana’s Live-In ‘Prison Angel’. Must read. It certainly refreshes my faith.

So I was pulling away from a gas station and was approaching the light just down the block as a lady in a car pulled up beside me, talking and rolling down her window at the same time. “…wallet in the street. money flew out.” I heard once her voice got through the open window, “and a truck stopped as soon as it happened.” Damn. I left my wallet on top of the car again, which is how I lost the last one, and this time I had a fair bit of money in it, a lot more than I regularly carry.

I swung around and went back to find two guys chasing down green paper, my money, which was scooting around in the breeze. One was out in traffic to fetch my wallet from the edge of the turn lane. Now at that moment, I had a choice of how to see things. Either these guys were good Samaritans or they were opportunistic profiteers. After a moment’s hesitation I set my mind that they were Samaritans. What the hell, give ‘em the benefit of the doubt, right?

I pulled over and said, “Thank God for you guys. You saved me big time.” He handed me my wallet through the window and then, with two hands, an almost spherical wad of crumpled bills. “I think we got it all.” He said. I thanked him profusely and he responded, “No problem.” as if almost getting his ass run over chasing money in the street was no problem.

So I had this wadded money and, since I am a compulsive bill straightener, I started to smooth my bills, counting as I went. I glanced up and they were sitting there in their truck looking at me, as if waiting for me to verify that I hadn’t been ripped off. Well, hell, did I trust them or not? So I put the wad back down, waved a last thank you and drove off. I got all the way to my destination before counting, but I was eager to see if my trust paid off or if I had been a fool.

All the money was there. I felt richer, even though I had no more money than when I started.