Life Is Strange—And Sometimes Even in a Good Way

An unusual thing happened to me today. And by 'unusual' I mean that in my entire life nothing quite like it has ever happened to me before.

Because my kitchen at home is unusable (if you follow me on the twittering machine, you know it is undergoing remodeling), I took my youngest, Wesdom, out to lunch this morning. He is home from college for the summer. A BLT for me and a Philly cheesesteak with fries for him, if you're interested.

As we were preparing to leave, the waitress came over. I asked her for the check and an unsweetened ice tea (my drink of choice) to go. She said, "You're good. Your check has been taken care of."

Huh? "I didn't pay it yet," I said. "We're not trying to dip out." ('In the parlance of our time,' I didn't say.)

She told me a couple of gentlemen in a far corner had asked for our check and then paid it.

"Where?" I said. "Who?"

"Oh, they left," she said. She was overweight, leaning on the table for a little support, maybe a little out of breath. Very nice, friendly. Prompt.

"Who were they?"

"No idea," she said.

Both Wesdom and I had walked past that booth on the way to the restroom earlier. (We couldn't use ours at home because the plumber was installing a sink.) I didn't recognize anyone else in the restaurant at the time.

Weird, huh?

So, bottom line: Somebody I don't know randomly picked up my check for lunch today. Anonymously.

Needless to say, I was dumbstruck. Wesdom said it was one of those 'pay it forward' moments. Karma had smiled on us.

"I suppose," I said. "But doesn't that put some sort of reciprocal obligation on us to keep it going? You know, pay it further forward."

"Ahyup."

We looked around the diner to find a likely prospect. The place has been here for like 75 years and every table was occupied. Everyone seemed reasonably prosperous, satisfied. "You know what we should do?" I said. "Let's leave the waitress a big tip."

"That's def the move," he said.

"She's the one in here who's really having to work hard. Everybody else can afford to take a lunch break and go out to eat. She's busting ass to keep everybody happy."

So that's what we did: we left her the price of the meal plus tip and walked out still shaking our heads with bewilderment.