You Shall Receive

Ted the Recycling Guy stopped his truck for me yesterday and offered me an orange hat. There he was barrelling down the road with a truck full of used but still useful stuff, at the end of a long stop-again-start-again route and getting himself warmed up in that cab, and he stopped for me because he thought my ears might be cold on a bitter February morning.

Ted always has something useful. He has found for me furniture; laundry baskets; and, after Easter, the discarded bulbs of withered flowers that have become my Easter garden. So that's Ted for you. When there's no good stuff out there, he'll stop and tell an off-color joke that is hysterical because it comes from Ted.

Ted and I know each other because every day I walk on one of his routes. That is the sole basis of our smile-and-wave frienship. It doesn't always take a lot.

I wish I had taken that hat yesterday.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse. (Anne-Sophie Swetchine)