Good, Bad, and.....

-First the ugly, I'm driving and listening to the radio yesterday....one of the St. Louis sports stations. Some guy who normally isn't even on the air...(and you're about to hear why)...was asked by a usual host of the show if he watched American Idol the night before. He says..(as though his very manhood would come into question if he said yes) ..."No....are you kidding?...I hate American Idol, and everybody associated with it...I wish that that Al Qaida would come in with a dirty bomb and blow everybody connected with it away...In fact, I would volunteer to do it myself."

What kind of moron would say anything like that on the air of a broadcast station? This mental midget sounded like he was overly concerned with whether somebody would think he had hair in certain places...than brains in his head. I hope the people that run his station send him back to pre-school where he can learn a few social skills. What's the old saying...I think Lincoln gets credit..."Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt."

The Bad-I'll bet Albert Pujols wishes he had remained silent about Barry Bonds.

What possible good could he be doing for baseball by saying people are being too hard on Bonds? What possible good could he have done for himself, for that matter? Albert is a caring guy, and probably empathises with Bonds to some degree. But, to say that people should respect his numbers...and you have to prove he's done wrong before you can say or write anything negative about the guy. Come on Albert. How much proof does anyone need? Building up Bonds does nothing for guys like Pujols who have done what they've done without cheating. That's the first major error Albert has made all season.

Good-You may not believe this actually happened, but I swear it's true.

I accompanied Barb on a grocery shopping mission earlier this week. After spending the usual hour, or so, rounding up all that we needed, we proceed to the check-out counter. We unload all of our goodies onto the conveyer belt and are carrying on a conversation as we do so. Neither of us really is paying much attention to what's going on right in front of us.

A young lady...accompanied by her young (maybe 3 year-old) son... has unloaded a large amount of stuff from her grocery cart. She runs her debit/credit card through the swiper thing and the clerk tells her that it didn't take. So, she tries it again. Still not working. Frustrated, she leaves the checkout counter and walks a short distance to an ATM machine. She swipes another card... nothing. As I said, we're not paying a whole lot of attention but I did see most of this out of the corner of my eye as I was chatting with Barb. The woman comes back to the check-out counter and shrugs her shoulders as if to say..."I guess I can't pay".

Suddenly, the woman in line behind us leans over to the clerk and asks what the amount is that the lady in front of us owes. The clerk tells her 117 dollars and some change. The tall, rather attractive, woman writes out a check for the amount and begins to hand it to the clerk. The lady whose card wouldn't work begins to protest..."No, no, I couldn't accept that... no, I couldn't". It's about this time that Barb and I focus in on what's going on...and realize something special is taking place.

The lady behind us insists on paying for the other woman's groceries...and says that she recently came into some money unexpectedly and wants to do it. She said to the woman in distress..."As long as you remember to do something similar for someone else when you get the chance."

At that, the woman and her son take the groceries that have been loaded back into her cart...and with some embarassment...she thanks the generous benefactor and leaves.

Well, there wasn't a dry eye around. The clerk, Barb, and I are all amazed at what we'd just seen. Before I left, I told the lady who wrote the check that I wished I had thought of it first. But, thinking of it...and actually doing it...is what makes some of those around us very special. Think of the life lesson that the little boy learned from that act of kindness. He will always know that there are some people who really care about others...and are willing to show it in a very concrete way.

I hope many good things come to Ms. Checkwriter...wherever she may be.