Sometimes It's Just Too Easy

     This past weekend was a busy one. It was the tax free weekend in North Carolina. It is the traditional school shopping weekend at our house for that very reason. Maddie bought her computer for college and Colton and I went shopping for his clothes, which he seems to outgrow almost weekly.

      Now when it comes to clothes shopping Colt is a bit of a divo, well sort of. The only place he will buy his clothes is JC Penney. Yeah, I know. Anyway, without JCP the boy would go around naked, so off we went to his favorite store. We gathered up a pretty impressive stack of clothes and drug them to the crowded dressing room. You know it is tax free weekend when even the guys dressing room is nearing capacity. Anyway, as I stood patiently waiting for Colt to try on his clothes, I engaged in one of my absolute favorite pastimes, people watching.

      I happened to notice another mom and her son working their way through the men's section and stopping occasionally to browse through the endless array of racks. The son was selecting items and the mom was looking at the price tags, shaking her head and putting them back. Every now and then they seemed to agree on something and she added it to her pile. They made their way past me and I turned my gaze to the next set of mother/son pairs many of which exhibited a similar shopping pattern. I felt kind of ashamed. Here I was just recently complaining about my station in life and right in front of me were so many folks obviously worse off than I was with their own set of trials and battles to fight.

      As Colt and I made our way to the check out counter with our arms full of new school clothes, I said a short prayer of thanks for the ability to buy these things for my son. I took out my credit card and a coupon that I had saved and gave them to the cashier. She smiled and said "This coupon is a good one. You can use it as much as you like in the next 24 hours and you can choose between 15% or $10 off your purchase whichever works out best." I smiled, grateful for a small break to my budget. It's a shame I won't be back tomorrow, I thought. Then who should appear next to me at the check out but one of the mothers that I had observed earlier and her son. I grinned, thinking sometimes this pay it forward thing is just too easy. "Do you have a coupon?" I asked her. "No." She responded. I said, "Would you like one?" As Colt and I walked out the door, he looked at me and said, "That was cool, Mom." Yeah, I thought, that kind of was. :)

Laurie