No good deed goes unpunished.

Yesterday, at a Kroger store

My wife was trying to get to the car in an Amigo shopping cart, one of those electric shopping carts with a basket in front of it, for handicapped and elderly people to do their grocery shopping, when she told me, the cart had run out of charge.

I helped her put her items into a regular shopping cart so she could walk to the car more easily as she has difficulty walking without some assistance. While this was happening, as I transferred the items to the regular shopping cart, a man who was deaf and could not talk due to being deaf, asked if he could use the cart if we were through with it. I tried to explain to the man that this cart was out of power and needed at least 15 minutes to charge before he could use it to shop. But, while this was going on, while I was explaining this to the deaf guy, he began to wave his arms and gesture at me in a way I was unfamiliar.

It turns out, that while I was talking to this old man who was deaf, my wife was aware of another man, who walked quickly to where I was standing, and who was in fact intoxicated and also had a gun in his pants belt. He reached down to my feet and retrieved a bank envelope full of cash with a 20 dollar bill sticking out of it. He verbally indicated to my wife, in a matter of fact manner, "Good, I found me some money. Now I can go buy me some more beer."

My wife asked the old man who by now was sitting in the out of power Amigo cart and he gestured to her to keep quiet. He in fact was concerned that the drunk man with the gun might be a danger to everyone to let him have his envelope of cash and be on with it. I was completely unaware that all of this was happening, as I was confused by the deaf man's hand gestures and facial expressions. I thought he was simply having trouble communicating to me due to being deaf.

So, in hind sight, If I had been aware that I was standing on a bank envelope, a Frost Bank envelope, according to my wife's description of it, and if I had picked it up before that drunken man with a gun had seen it, I would in fact have looked inside the envelope for some kind of receipt, something to identify who the money belonged to, and I would have returned the money to it's rightful owner and been the hero for a day. But since I was so distracted by the behavior of the old man who wanted the cart I simply had no idea that a drunk man with a gun had literally reached down to my feet and picked up that envelope full of cash much less that he had a gun on him.

After I gave my wife the push cart to go to the car, I walked the deaf man back to the store and he began to pull the electric plug from the rear of the electric shopping cart and tried to plug the wrong end into the power outlet. I took the cord from him and plugged it back into the back of the cart, then put the right end into the power strip and he pointed at his watch. I told him to please, wait for at least 10 to 15 minutes then unplug it and he could then go do his shopping. But it seemed the poor man was not fully coherent. And in hind sight, I think that that envelope full of cash, might in fact have belonged to the deaf guy. It is sometimes hard to assess a situation that occurs in a wink of an eye. After all this, I had trouble backing out of the parking lot, due to many cars, trucks and people, moving along the back of the space I was attempting to back out of so we could drive back home with our groceries. I finally got the chance to back out safely and go forward that because of all the distractions both inside Kroger and out, with all the holiday last minute shoppers were practically taking the entire store apart making it look like it was hit by a tornado, I somehow drove the car out of gear and the car was sluggishly moving forward in low gear instead of drive. By the time I was out of the shopping center and on to a side street, I stopped the car along side the curb and noticed that the gear shift lever was not quite properly in D (drive).

After I put the gear into Drive, it seemed to work properly instead of staying in low gear and not getting too much acceleration due to my having put the gear between Drive and Low, due mostly to having been distracted in the Kroger parking lot. I was so upset that I did this that by the time I got home I immediately called a friend who is an auto mechanic, if I hurt the transmission by driving in between gears and he told me that I didn't drive far enough and at high enough speed to do any harm whatsoever to the transmission. So I took the car for a test drive to the local public library about 15 minutes after unloading the groceries at the house. So far, the car seems to perform like normal. But still, I was upset, more about driving in low gear, than the fact that back at Kroger, a drunk man carrying a firearm, might have shot me dead to get at that envelope of cash that I managed to step on and not even knowing it.

So yesterday was a day I won't soon forget. If only it had turned out differently. I found the money, returned it to it's owner, drove the car home properly in Drive, and not had the headache and the stress of all the things that went on, plus we both got the flu from being out shopping right at Thanksgiving and Texas, along with many southern states, have been hit hard by a flu outbreak that has resulted in hundreds of deaths. There is a lingering cough that both me and my wife have, 18 days after first symptoms occurred. The year 2019 will be remembered as the age of Trump Impeachment and Trump Delusion Syndrome, Climate change and Mass consumption and corporate pharmaceutical advertisements on network television that will probably be even more intense in the year 2020 when we see Space Farse, The rise of Trumpism and MAGA mania as the Democrats go head to head with the Republican Senate in the battle to bring us back to sanity with the ultimate impeachment and removal of Donald Trump, but then again, his supporters seem to be unwavering and in lock step with Trump. So we will see what happens. 2020 certainly will be one for the history books.

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