I had to visit a fellow amateur radio operator this morning to pick
up some materials to teach a class with this fall. So I was up and at
'em bright and oily this morning - no, wait a minute, I took a shower,
but didn't shave, so maybe bright and fuzzy is more apt!
I
got in the truck, and saw something sitting on the hood of the truck.
This not in and of itself unusual as sticks, leaves, bird crap,
occasional rocks, and other natural debris seem to be drawn to my
truck's bonnet. I got out and found this, which was definitely not
natural debris.
Yes, that's right. A cupcake in a Zip-Loc
® bag. With a popsicle stick and sticky note on it. Upon closer inspection, I saw this on the note:
If you're having trouble reading it, it says "Kindness is never a mistake...Please be kind to someone today!"
Nice
sentiment. I try to be kind to the people I encounter every day. And
generally, they are kind to me back. It's not tough to smile at clerks
and waitresses and attendants and secretaries and bosses. I smile at
people I pass on the street, and hold doors open for people - male or
female. I don't much care about that parking place one slot from the
door, I can walk a bit if you want it. It's not hard at all, and quite
frankly, elicits more than a few smiles back, some mumbled thanks, and
hopefully, I've cheered at least one person up. At the very least, I've
treated the people I come into contact with the way
I want to be treated. Isn't that the Golden Rule? The one so many "mouthpieces" for so many groups out there have forgotten? So I try.
Here's
the next question...Who left the cupcake on my truck? There's no
acknowledgement of the baker or the person who left it there. It wasn't
there when I went to bed last night about 11PM. And if it had been, I'm
quite sure a raccoon or possum or squirrel or dog or bird would have
been the one trying to absorb the sentiment attached - as well as the
sugar and fat content - rather than me. It was a cool night and morning,
so it didn't melt into a mass of chocolate oblivion, but I am guessing
that someone left it early this morning. Normally, I'm out of the house
by 6:30AM during the summer, so who knows if this would have been left
for me if today was a work day. But who was it? I'll be perfectly
honest, I don't know my neighbors at all. Steve (I think his name is) is
on the right side of my house, I think Frank and his wife are two to
the left. The crazy woman is three houses up beside Clarence. But other
than guessing at some names, that's about it for neighborhood
friendliness around here. I guess it was a roving band of do-gooders,
which is not necessarily a bad thing, but seems a bit out of place.
There was no religious tract with it, and the cupcake appears homemade.
Which
brings up the final question...To eat it or not? There are, of course,
two trains of thought on that. One: OH MY GOD NO!!!! YOU CAN'T EAT
THAT!!!! You have no idea who made it! What if their kitchen isn't
clean?! You don't know what's in it! What if there's a razor in it?! Or
cocaine?!? Or poison?!?!?! You'd be stupid to eat something that you had
no idea where it came from!!! How dumb can you be? Someone could be
trying to kill you, or get you addicted to drugs, or (fill in the blank
here with some doomsday scenario). There are people who think this way,
who tether their children on Halloween, and after trick or treating at
the church gathering or the mall, take the treats to the hospital to be
x-rayed (even though in the history of x-raying children's Halloween
candy, there has
never, that's right,
never been an
incident of a foreign object in a piece of candy or fruit. There's never
been a case of drugs or poison in candy or other treats except one
incident in Texas, and that was traced to a head case trying to screw with his girlfriend by messing with her kids, and she figured it out
pretty quick. The idiot was arrested. There's the other question of why
someone would do such a thing as contaminate cupcakes they leave
throughout the neighborhood (I'm assuming I'm not the only recipient,
though the way our neighborhood is configured, it can be tough to see
other car hoods if you're not looking carefully from the right angles).
The
other side of that is...Why would anyone leave a tainted cupcake with a
happy message on it? I'm still not sure who has the money (and guts) to
bake a bunch of cupcakes and leave them all over the neighborhood, but
I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be any nefarious intent to it. I did discover this disclaimer on the back of the sticky note: "This
cupcake contains eggs and flour". So there. Covered for bad intentions.
It's a quiet neighborhood, we all tend to keep to ourselves a bit, but I
think if anyone had actually eaten one, gotten sick and gone to the
doc-in-a-box or the ER, they might have figured out what was happening
and let us know. "Don't eat the free cupcakes!" There are a lot of
people who believe the world is out to get them. And their kids. You
know the stick figures you see in the back windows of (usually)
minivans? There are people who write to Dear Abby to ask her to warn
everyone to take them out of the windows, lest a kidnapper see them,
follow them home, stalk them, and kidnap the kids! How many kinds of bad
luck would have to come together for THAT to happen?! Yeesh! Walking to
school is now too dangerous (it isn't, just look at crime statistics),
but parents won't let their kids (and schools won't let the children
walk either). Oddly enough, you'd have to walk to school something like
750,000 times before you'd get stranger abducted. At 180 days per school
year, that's 4167 YEARS worth of walking. You'd be plenty fit, but most
likely, still around to talk about it. You are more likely to be hit by
lightning, and definitely more likely to die in a car accident while
being driven to school! Yet we don't stop driving our kids everywhere
instead of letting them walk to the park two blocks away. Lenore
Skenazy, the
World's Worst Mom,
has a whole blog, a book, and now makes a living stressing that the
world is not as dangerous as many make it out to be. You should
visit her blog sometime.
Anyway,
I'm of the "HEY! FREE CUPCAKE!!!" school! And sure, I'll be nice to
someone today, why not? (But I'm not buying the $180 fuel system
cleaning and brake system flush that Goodyear tried to sell me while I
was getting the oil changed, the tires rotated, and the alignment
checked on the Xterra. I'm not
that nice!)
