I remember the first time that I saw her. She was short and fit with dirty blonde hair, bent over the disaster of her bike and the load of school books that had scattered across the black top of the parking lot. The bike looked like it must have been twenty years old; it even had one of those old book clamps that sat just above the back tire. She didn't look like she was having such a great day.
I had just gotten finished with the application process for entrance into a local community college near where I lived in Phoenix. (For some reason, still totally unbeknownst to me, I had decided to stay home for a semester instead of returning back to real college life at BYU.) So, I did the only thing any single male of comparable age would do when presented with a beautiful girl in a distressing situation: played the knight in shining armor.
The bike fit easily into the space behind the rear seat of my parent's faded red Ford Aerostar minivan. Real beater of a car by that time, but hey it was transportation. She only lived a few miles away from the school and gave good directions.
Her name was Shauna. We talked for a bit about random things--I can't remember any of the details now; just small talk though. After about ten minutes, I pulled up in front of her house and helped get her bike out of the back of the van. She carried her stack of books, and I left thinking that I would never see or think of her again.
Ahem.
As things would have it, the plans that I had made that night to take my little sister out to dinner fell through and I was left with nothing to do. So, I decided to do what any completely insane nobody would do and drove my red minivan back to her house, knocked on the door, and asked her if she had plans for that night. As it happened, she did. But she gladly changed them so that we could get together instead.
We hung out a few more times, and during one of these "dates" I decided to drag her to the grocery store and buy some ice cream and the makings for hot fudge. Sounded like a good idea at the time. The closest store was an Albertson's so we jumped in the go-mobile and jetted over. Once there, we grabbed the things that we needed, and as I made a guess as to how much everything would cost, I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that I might not have enough money to cover it. It was only like seven bucks. I fretted over the issue though over until we were nearly next in line, and then quickly asked Shauna if she had any money on her. She did--three dollars--which she casually handed to me.
As it ended up, I had enough money to cover it. Made it under the total by something like seventeen cents (my worries hadn't been unwarranted after all). Anyhow, as I picked up the sack of groceries and we were walking away from the register, she said, "You're not like other boys." "How's that," I asked. "You let girls pay for stuff."
At that point my chest nearly caved in completely. I felt like the biggest heel. Something about being practical (I had just gotten home from an LDS mission, had--prior to visiting the store--seven dollars to my name, and hadn't yet found a job) tumbled out of my mouth, and I felt even worse at having made up some stupid excuse to cover my inability to provide. At that point, giving her the three dollars back just seemed like it'd be a travesty of some sort or other, and so I kept them. I never did ask her what she meant when she said what she did. I mean, was she saying that I was some sort of goober for making her pay for anything, or was she glad that she had been able to contribute to the date? Mabye she had been forced into keeping her wallet in her pocket by an overbearing boyfriend in the past. Who knows? I certainly don't.
When I got home, I put the three dollars in my wallet and tried to foget about them. But I couldn't. The next day, I pullled the three bills out, folded them in half once and then again, and slid them into one of the inner pockets of my wallet (ie, not in the billfold section).
There have been many times since then that I have pulled out those three dollars and thought about them and what they represent. Yeah, I still have 'em. And every time that I come across them, whether I'm cleaning out the massive tornado that I call a wallet or I'm just looking for something I think I stuck in there sometime before, I remember Shauna and the decision that I made to let her pay for something on that date so long ago.
But did she really pay for anything? You know, I think that she did; because those three dollars have made a larger impact on my life, than any carton of ice cream or pile of hot fudge ever could have. They bought a part of me.
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