God's Intervention
by
Nettie Stadnyk
I made seventeen phone calls on a Monday morning to get two spares for the tie breaker in Glen Briar Club championship curling game. No luck!
With frustration bordering on anger, I gritted my teeth as I listened to flimsy excuses for not sparing: headache, too cold, must finish my library book due back on Friday, tea with neighbour, grocery shopping, washing my hair, picking my nose, ad infinitum.
Why place your name on the spare list if you are going to dream up excuses?
To relieve stress and deter my on-coming headache, I decided to take a break from phoning and get some groceries. As luck would have it, Safeway was having a sale: "Buy one, get one free." The line-ups at each cashier were a mile long. I chose the shortest. After a few minutes, which seemed like an hour, the cashier closed her till and I was forced to move to another mile-long line. Damn! Three times!
Again, the line moved at a snail's pace. Some customer at the front forgot to get eggs. A helper was sent to get a dozen. More delay! I shifted weight from one foot to the other and heaved an audible impatient sigh.
Then some old fogey, second in line, decided to pay for her groceries in change. Would you believe? In quarters, nickels and dimes! She started looking in her small change purse, taking out one coin at a time and totalling them. For minutes she fiddled around for three pennies to make up $14.13. Then, after struggling to retrieve them and separate them from the silver, she thought she had made an error in the total and began re-counting.-*?#~!
I was fit to be tied. Should I move to the end of another line? Should I stay and have a nervous breakdown? At this point, the Guy in the sky intervened. Two sisters in front of me began to make funny comments. I decided to vent my feelings and joined in. One thing led to another and somehow we started to talk about curling on T.V.
"Do you curl?" I asked the lady next to me.
"Yes, we do, but haven't done much this winter because my sister and I just moved from Roblin to Winnipeg two weeks ago. We haven't had time to check out the curling rinks."
"Would you like to spare for me at St. Vital at 9:15 this Wednesday morning?"
"Sure would. That would give us a chance to get acquainted with curlers here."
With difficulty I refrained from hugging the ladies!
"Then I looked up and, with a big sigh of relief, silently remarked, "I owe you one!"