Flower Power

In a previous post, I posited that I had generally strived to be Gallant (rather than Goofus). I realize now that this is probably part of the source of my liberal bent -- Be nice to others! Think not only of yourself! -- so perhaps the indoctrination of children into the democratic party starts quite young.

Anyway, I mentioned a set of flowers and asked the readers of this blog whether you thought I was the kind of person who would (a) find a set of flowers and take them back to my office, or (b) buy a set of flowers then forget them at the post office.

Well, I'm happy to report the actual events of this past Tuesday.

I did actually have a box I needed to mail to Mark, containing a set of gifts constituting his Christmas and birthday gifts. I was in fact bored at work, so I decided to go take a walk to the post office to get the box shipped off.

I made it to the post office to use the self-serve machine.

And it was there that I found a set of flowers sitting on top of the postage ATM. After doing a good amount of looking around to make sure the original owner wasn't coming back, I made off with the flowers.

In my defense, it's not like the owner was going to come back for them. I had spent a pretty good amount of time at the postage ATM myself. If he didn't notice his flowers were missing while I was at the machine, he wasn't going to notice. And then by the time he did notice, someone else would have stolen taken them.

T. was very happy with them, though she did look at me funny when I presented them to her. I don't know why, but she looked at me with a suspicious twinkle in her eye. "What are these for?" she asked.

"Because I love you!" I said, grinning wildly. Which is funny, coming from me, to a married woman.

"No, seriously," she said. Apparently, it's really not like me at all to randomly purchase flowers for her, or for the office. Well, I guess she's right on that score.

I explained to her where I found them and she laughed. "Wow, these are nice ones too," she surmised. "Not the cheap kind. And the florist is generally pretty expensive to begin with."

I did kind of feel bad for the poor sap who forgot the flowers in the post office. Hopefully they weren't "Honey-I'm-so-sorry-we-fought-last-night-I-was-wrong
-I'm-always-wrong-let's-please-have-sex-tonight" flowers or something. Anyway, I felt so bad, I decided to try to step into his shoes, which is why my blog entry now has two points of view on it. I'm the bastard I call the thief at the end of Scenario Two.

To those of you who are disappointed at the thought that I'm some kind of flower thief... sorry. And I don't do it often. And I only do it with clearly abandoned property. Except one time when I tried to pick up a quarter on the floor at the foot of a bridge in San Antonio. Turns out it was pretty much cemented into the ground to psych out cheap idiots like me. I was embarrassed.