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March Slice of Life No. 24.

“Begin challenging your own assumptions.
Your assumptions are your windows on the world.
Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.”
– Alan Alda

Several years ago my redheaded daughter-in-law shared “The Cookie Thief” with me. This week, I stumbled across the copy I had kept, and as I read, I smiled at the irony, I chuckled because airport stories are a big part of my life, and I felt the pang of its truth and wondered, Have I been guilty of eating another person’s cookies?

The Cookie Thief

by Valerie Cox

At an airport one night
With several long hours
Before her flight.
She hunted for a book
In an airport shop,
Bought a bag of cookies
And found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book
But happened to see,
That the man sitting beside her
As bold as could be,
Grabbed a cookie or two
From the bag in between,
Which she tried to ignore
To avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies
And watched the clock,
As the gutsy cookie thief
Diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated
As the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice,
I would blacken his eye.”

With each cookie she took,
He took one too,
When only one was left,
She wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face,
And a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie
And broke it in half.

He offered her half,
As he ate the other,
She snatched it from him
And thought… Oh, brother!
This guy had some nerve
And he’s also rude,
Why he didn’t even show
Any gratitude!

She had never known
When she’d been so galled,
And sighed with relief
When her flight was called.

She gathered her belongings
And headed to the gate,
Refusing to look back
At the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane,
And sank in her seat,
Then she sought her book,
Which was almost complete.

As she reached in her baggage,
She gasped with surprise,
There was her bag of cookies,
In front of her eyes.

If mine are here,
She moaned in despair,
The others were his,
And he tried to share.

Too late to apologize,
She realized with grief,
That she was the rude one,
The ingrate, the thief!

Source: Chicken Soup for the Soul, (c) 1996 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

 

 

Take-away truisms

  • Most people actually have a good reason to do the things they do.
  • Things are not always as they appear.
  • Everyone chooses his/her own response.

 

Applied to my life

May I not be guilty of thinking
I know for certain that something is a
certain way, lest I discover that
what I believe
to be
is not.



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http://twowritingteachers.org
for more slice of life stories.
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