Angels

I decided to walk down to the grocery store this morning with Anna and Sophie in the baby jogger. But as I was getting ready to leave, I noticed the tire was flat.

My hero husband came to the rescue with some sort of foam in a bottle. He filled up the tire with the foam and we were ready to go.

It was hot. Eleven o'clock in the morning on a potentially hundred-and-four-degree day.

Halfway there I heard a funny sound.

When I looked down, I saw white foam squirting out of the sides of the tire. Behind us was a long white trail. I watched the wheel go flat, flat, and flatter, splattering white foam on the sidewalk.

We wobbled the rest of the way to the grocery store, but once there I figured I'd had enough of pushing a gimp baby jogger in the heat. I decided to call Aaron and ask him to come get me.

Too bad I didn't bring a cell phone.

At the store, I scraped together some change for a 25-cent phone call. I waited in line for the cashier to exchange my one dime, one nickel, and ten pennies for a quarter.

Then I headed with Sophie and Anna in a shopping cart to the outside pay phone.

Did anyone else know the payphone company is gouging customers by charging fifty cents a call these days? I sure didn't.

Upon realizing that I couldn't make a call with my solitary quarter, I dug into the zippered pouch of my wallet. Three patacas (from Macau) and a few ten cent Hong Kong coins, and four or five other pennies were all I had left. No other cash.

"Well, I guess we'll walk home with the flat tire," I told Anna.

I looked up to see a man approaching me, holding out a cell phone.

"I noticed you trying to make a call," he said. "Do you want to use my phone?"

Yes, there are such things as angels.