Part of the craziness that I was alluding to in previous posts is the fact that my Dad recently had surgery. They basically cleaned out the arteries in his lower extremities, put seven or so stents up to his kidneys and called it a day. Oh yeah, and they wrapped the artery with the lining of a cow heart to help it heal and “patch” it. Cool, huh? Talk about value-added agriculture!

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. I want to tell you a little story about my trip into a store.

My Dad – I took this picture ice fishing last year. It’s one of my favorites!

On Friday, my Dad’s legs were hurting worse than usual. The docs had some concern about a blood clot, so I ended up driving him to the emergency room. Mind you, we were in the starting phases of a winter storm, so traveling wasn’t exactly pleasant.

After a few hours with the friendly docs, they determined that it was just a giant pool of fluid/blood (a hematoma), that was causing the discomfort, not a blood clot. Whew! So off we went, headed home.

My Mom had asked if I would pick up a few things in the larger town we were in, so I ran over to a near-by store and had quite the experience:

As I was waiting in line to check out the few items I had purchased, a lady came up to the customer service counter. Somehow a few extra bags of groceries were placed with her things, and she was returning the items that weren’t hers.

The cashier was extremely grateful, knowing that someone would be delighted to have their purchases back, and thanked her kindly for her thoughtfulness. Instead of walking away, with a happy heart, knowing she had made someone’s day a little brighter, the Good Samaritan asked to see a manager, requesting that she be rewarded for her honesty.

WHAT?!?

Is that the world we now live in? We’ll only do good things, if someone pays us for it? Was I being punked? Could this be happening?

I didn’t stick around to see how the situation ended up. I’m not sure if the lady was “rewarded” in a way that she felt was suitable or not. All I know is that I left the store with a heavy heart, wondering what happened to our society.

I have quickly come to the conclusion that although there is nothing I can do to change that situation, I certainly can do my part to restore a little faith in humanity.

What are my plans? Ah, you see, a true Good Samaritan never talks about their good deeds, and never expects a reward in exchange.

They just do what comes naturally.

Merry Christmas, everyone!