Monday, January 27, 2014

The Gift with the Best of Intentions

Remember how you felt last time you got a parking ticket? Or maybe you remember that feeling when the police stopped you for a traffic violation. It is that feeling of flight or fight. Although when you get pulled over by Johnny Law, you can’t fight and you certainly can’t take flight.

I’ve only been pulled over by a policeman two times in almost 40 years since I got my license. The first time was in the mountains of Arizona. We were depressed as we returned home to Colorado after the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe in 1989 where our Mountaineers had taken a beating in the game. When the policeman stopped me he said that I was doing 55 mph on the straight section of road, but when I passed him I took the curve at 62 mph. This West Virginia girl knows how to drive those curvy roads. After he wrote the ticket, he saw a WV football hanging from the rearview mirror and asked if we were from there. Then he went on to say that he wouldn’t have given me a ticket if he’d known that!

The second time I got pulled over was just recently. I had turned onto the highway and was accelerating up the hill when I saw the red and blue lights. When the cop approached the car I remembered a friend, who gets pulled over often but rarely gets a ticket, said she always apologized profusely.

I said, “I am so sorry. I had just started speeding up and didn’t realize how fast I was going.” He said, “You may have been speeding, but that wasn’t why I stopped you. Back there where you turned right, the light was red and you didn’t stop. Although a lot of people think there is a green turn arrow, but there isn’t.” Now, I felt really stupid because I just confessed to something else for him to give me a ticket. So, I apologized again. He said he wouldn’t give me a ticket only a verbal warning. Whew! I thought to myself, I really need to pay-it-forward for not having gotten a ticket at all.

Today’s gift was to give someone money to help pay for their parking ticket. After I saw it, I wrote a short note saying that I wanted to help pay for their ticket, put money in an envelope and sealed it. Just as I got out of my car, I saw her pull out of the parking spot and drive away. I missed my chance. So, this random act of kindness turned out to be a gift that had the best of intentions, but didn’t get delivered.

In Giving,

Robin

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