Christmas Karma
29-11-2015Now that we have Nugget in our lives myself and the lady friend are getting into a few new Christmas related traditions. One of those is bringing the little bundle of joy out and about on cold winter nights so we can have pictures taken. The better to build memories my dear.
Anyway, as most people who glance at the telly around this time of year will know there is an advert for Coca Cola where an articulated trucks branded with Christmas cheer drives around. The kids smile, the adults all look wistfully at the truck as it passes the by, there is a Christmas miracle at the end. All very moving and what not.
Well tonight the truck, or one of them, was parked in the Tesco carpark in Maynooth. A short hop in the car and off we went with Nugget to get our picture taken and kick off the festive season for us.
As is always going to be the case with these sort of things there was a queue. A fairly long queue. One of those windy ones that is four lanes deep before you get near the main attraction. But we had nothing else to do, Nugget was wrapped up so snugly she was sweating, so the end of the queue we joined. It was cold but the line moved at a fairly steady clip. There was a Santa running around entertaining the youngsters. People handed out cans of coke and a bunch of Santa's little helpers kept the crowd entertained with singing and other little photo opportunities.
When we reached the half way mark it started to rain and a good estimate was that there was about forty minutes of queuing left. The lady friend and I decided to leave it and try again next year. We made our way back through the crowd to a corner point of the line, where one of the helpers opened the barrier and out we stepped. As we were about to walk off he kindly pointed out that if one of us wanted to stay in line, while the other brought Nugget back to the car, then they could text and bring back the baby for that Christmas family photo.
Considering how cold it had gotten I did the manly thing and volunteered to bring Nugget back to the car, so the lady friend was conscripted into returning to our spot in the queue.
I had only just arrived back at the car, climbed in, when the lady friend shows up and takes Nugget out of the car seat. It turns out that manners go out the window with some people at this time of year. A family of ignorant asshats refused to allow the lady friend to return to our spot, quoting that she had 'Left so she could just join the back of the line' as the valid reason. Since, as you all know, the extra ten seconds they had just gained was going to be put to good use being ignorant asshats to somebody else in the near future. This rightly upset the lady friend as she really wanted to get the photo taken, but she decided instead to just leave and went back to the corner exit.
The polite gent opened the barrier and asked if she had decided to just not bother at all. She told him the story and his reaction has to be the very definition of 'instant karma'.
"Well I can't have people not being Christmassy around Christmas time," he said. "Go get your husband and baby and I will bring you to the top of the line now."
So back to the line we went, escorted by this local spirit of Christmas to the top of the queue. Picture taken, wife happy, Nugget farting, and all was right in the world again it seemed.
Such a random act of kindness as the direct result of a random act of ignorance. You just don't see it as much in the world as you should, but thankfully there are still some nice people out there and this lad was definitely one of them.
Blue_jester