Perhaps it was karma.
There's the adage "karma's a bitch" but sometimes it can be a gift. If what happened on Saturday was, indeed, karma, it took nearly eight years to come around.
His jacket had a pocket for everything: the left pocket held keys to the house, mailbox, and bike lock. The key chain also had a small bottle opener, for just such an occasion. In the right pocket, he stored the keys to his vehicles.
There were two breast pockets: in the right one, he kept a mask for when he was indoors or in close proximity to people; in the left, his smartphone was always handy.
There was a fifth pocket, on the left sleeve, and it was so small that it could only serve one purpose: to hold his small wallet. The wallet was a simple RFID case that could hold about four or five cards. In it, he kept his debit and credit cards, his drivers' license, and his health card. When he worked at his office, it also held his ID badge so that he could gain access to the secured building.
Often, it would hold an emergency $20 bill.
On this Saturday morning of the Easter long weekend, his wife sent him on an errand to his local grocery store. They were basically well-stocked with essentials but because this was the Easter weekend, they wanted to have a nice dinner, even though neither were religious nor were both kids at home to participate in the traditional egg hunt.It would be a small, quiet meal.
He was sent to purchase a small ham, to get some fresh fruit and a couple of vegetables. Because he loved the artisan sausages, he decided to pick up a couple, to cook, crumble, and add to homemade pizzas sometime through the week.
He was a sucker for the store-brand potato chips, so he threw a couple of bags into the cart. And as much as he was addicted to the chips, his wife loved the store-baked Portuguese tarts, so a box also was added.
It was a quick in-and-out of this store, as he desperately wanted to avoid the weekend crowds.
At the check-out lines, he scanned to see which was the shortest, but it was the cashier at the express line who saw him first, called out to him and beckoned him over. He had fewer than the nine-item limit, so he wasted no time in approaching her.
As she tallied his items, his had went instinctively to his left-arm sleeve. Out of habit, he slapped the small pocket before reaching for the zipper. He wasn't sure why he made this move but perhaps it was just to reassure himself that his wallet was secured in place.
This time, however, his fingers were not met with the resistance of cards in a tiny pouch.
A place for everything and everything in its place, he thought. He was also reminded of a saying that he had heard as a teen: "Put your keys in your right pocket and you'll never go wrong." His car keys always went in his right pocket. House keys in the left. Cell phone, left-breast pocket. His mask was on his face, so the right-breast pocket was empty.
He squeezed his key pockets and only felt metal. He felt the beast pockets, reached into the one with the phone. Nothing.
He almost never put his wallet in his pants pockets but stranger things had happened. All were empty.
"Oh no," he said to the cashier. "I've left my wallet at home." He then remembered that he had memorized his credit card number. In more than two years of working and staying at home, of ordering items online, he had memorized the 16-digit number, knew the expiry date and the security verification number. "Can you manually enter credit-card details?" He asked the cashier.
"I'm afraid I can't," came the disappointing answer.
A voice came to him from behind. "What's the matter?"
He turned to face a tall, smooth-headed man with a black face mask, similar to his own. A name tag hung from his shirt and gave only this man's first name: Chris.
"This is embarrassing," he said, "I seem to have left my wallet at home. I'll have to come back. I'm sorry."
Chris took a look at the checked items and didn't skip a beat. "It's okay," he said, "I've got this." To the cashier, he said, "I'll pay for this."
"No," the man said, "I can be back in 15 minutes."
"I insist," said Chris. "You don't want to have to drive back and forth and go through the line again. This is my treat."
The man had spent the pandemic avoiding close contact with the public. But he didn't hesitate to proffer his hand. Chris took it and their eyes met. "This is very kind of you. I can come back and pay you later."
"No, don't worry about it," said Chris. "Happy Easter."
"Happy Easter," he echoed back.
Perhaps it was karma.
Nearly eight years earlier, he had found himself in a line, on Christmas Eve, waiting for an elderly woman to pay for her gifts in a shop. That time, her credit cards were declined and the woman seemed confused and unable to decide her next steps.
When the cashier looked apologetically at the man for the holdup, he held up cash and, with some gestures and silent words, indicated that he would pay for the woman's items, for the cashier to let the elderly woman go.
The cost of her goods came to about $30. On this day, nearly eight years later, in his local and favourite grocery store, another Good Samaritan had paid $32 worth of groceries for him.
What goes around, comes around.
***
I wish to thank Chris, the manager of the Farm Boy in Barrhaven, Nepean, for the generosity and kindness that he showed to a total stranger.
***
Follow-up: I phoned Chris, this morning, to thank him again for his generosity and kindness, and once again offered to come in and repay him. "I wouldn't have cared if your groceries had cost $200," he said, "this is what we do at Farm Boy." He wouldn't hear of me repaying him.
He had also heard that our story was shared on social media and had gone viral. Thousands of likes and retweets on Twitter. People phoned the store on Saturday to tell him about the wonderful thing he had done for a total stranger.
Instead, I told him, I will be making a donation to our community food bank, in his name. I'll do that, this morning. He was happy with that compromise.
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