This Weekend's Assignment

Our assignment over the weekend was to buy a drink for a stranger. Well, I'm not sure if I fulfilled that assignment but it IS possible. This past week I gave a few bucks out to some beggars. One of them was at the Cafe Rio in Provo and the other was standing at a freeway off-ramp in Salt Lake. The first guy at Cafe Rio was pretty interesting. He approached Jenna and me and asked us if we had any money. My first reaction was to say "no" and keep walking on, which is exactly what I did. But then I remembered that I did have a few dollars in my wallet so we turned around and I said, "Hey man, I actually do have a dollar for you. Make good use of it, ok?" I was expecting to hear him say thanks or something but instead he just started cussing us out. He seemed so nice at first but right after I handed him the money he was telling me how horrible I was for not giving him the dollar the first time he asked and just started saying a bunch weird stuff to us. So who knows? Maybe he bought a drink with that dollar... I do doubt that though.
The second time I gave out a dollar, which was by the freeway off-ramp, the experience went as expected. I rolled my window down and signaled for the man to come over to the car and he accepted the money with much gratitude and then waved to us as we drove away. I have a feeling that he used my dollar to buy a drink though. Well, regardless of how the money was spent, I feel good about giving a dollar to each of them. I wish I had more to give! I wish I would have just paid for some stranger's drink while I was at Olive Garden this weekend though. It is such a great feeling when some stranger buys you something! It happened to me at a gas station a few months ago. After I had finished filling up, I realized that the person before me had put their card in and got the station ready for the next person to just come and fill up. So I didn't even have to pay! Now, its possible that it was an accident and I bought gas with someone else's money who didn't mean to leave the pump station like that... But I like to think that it was just some nice person that felt like paying for the gas of the next person who drove up to that particular station. I was very grateful and plan on paying it forward.