This morning was the Shamrock Run. Kevin and I are usually very well prepared: bibs attached to our race shirts, watches and ipods charged, chips attached to our shoelaces, shirts and gloves to toss if necessary - all the night before. We were pretty well prepared for this one - all except actually attaching our bibs to our shirts. When we went to put them on this morning (around 6am) we realized that safety pins were not included in the race packets this time. Not only that, but we had just cleaned the car out and had none in there. We raided Yaya and Papa's house for something, but all we came up with was one safety pin. We ended up leaving the house about ten minutes early and planned to stop at Walgreens on the way down to the race. Walgreens wasn't open yet. So we moved on and ran in to Plaid Pantry - they didn't have safety pins. So, again, we moved on - this time to Safeway, which was open 24 hours and was sure to have what we needed. However, we realized that neither of us had brought our wallet us. We had no money to purchase said safety pins. We scraped up 75 cents from the car, but I knew that wasn't going to be enough. We went in anyway, just to check it out and see if MAYBE someone in there MIGHT have some spare pins laying around. Kevin went through the aisles and grabbed a pack that was $2.19. I went straight to customer service but there was nobody at the counter. There was, however, a Safeway employee walking by so I stopped him ...
Me: Excuse me, sir... I have a very shot-in-the-dark question for you: you wouldn't happen to have any spare safety pins just laying around anywhere, would you?
Him: I don't think so, no, sorry.
Me: OK, thanks. We're on our way to a race and realized that we don't have pins for our numbers.
Him: Oh! Well the safety pins are over on aisle (5).
Me: Yeah ... we also don't have our wallets so we don't have any money. We have the 75 cents that we got from our car, but that's it.
Him: That presents a problem.
Me: Yeah.
Him: Well, let's see. (Looking around, thinking) ... Can I let you borrow two dollars?
Me: Oh my gosh. Would you trust me to bring it back to you? I PROMISE you I will!
Him: I guess I just HAVE to trust that you will. Come on over here and let me get it for you.
He went to the register, got out his wallet, and gave us two dollars to pay for the box of safety pins. Such a kind man. So so generous and trusting. I'm sure he was thinking that he may not get his two dollars back, and yet he still gave it to me. Being that we didn't have our wallets with us, we borrowed a couple of dollars from Kevin's dad at the race and immediately drove back to the Safeway on our way home to return it to Lee (I overheard one of the girls saying, "Wow, Lee! that's so nice of you." when he was getting out his wallet). I thanked him whole-heartedly and he asked us how the race went. He even seemed genuinely interested in our run.
Such a nice nice man. I wish he knew how much that helped us out this morning.
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