A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours
before her flight. She hunted for a book in an airport shop, bought a
bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see
that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be.
He grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which
she tried to ignore to avoid a scene. So she munched the cookies and
watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I
wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye.” With each cookie she took,
he took one too. When only one was left, she wondered what he
would do. With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh, he took the
last cookie and broke it in half. He offered her half, as he ate the
other. She snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother! This guy
has some nerve and he's also rude. Why he didn't even show any
gratitude! She had never known when she had been so galled and
sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her
belongings and headed to the gate, refusing to look back at the
thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane and sank in her seat, and then she sought her
book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage,
she gasped with surprise, there was her bag of cookies in front of her
eyes. If mine are here, she moaned in despair, the others were his,
and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief that she was the rude
one, the ingrate, the thief.
How many times in our lives, have we absolutely known that
something was a certain way, only to discover later that what we
believed to be the truth … was not?
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