A very thoughtful present

A week or so ago, my wife found a rather puzzling grocery tote bag someone had dropped by our front-door after ringing the doorbell.

I discovered it when I returned from skiing, looked at it and in the absence of an address, phone number or web address, I noticed a name “Foodland” that sounded a bit like “Foodtown” a name known in the area, and assumed someone had dropped it to advertise for a small grocery store using the same moniker and located 15 miles from Park City.

Strange promotion indeed when we already have 6 large grocery store in an 8 mile radius around our home. Apparently unrelated to this mysterious bag, we also helped some neighbors while they were in Hawaii during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Specifically, we agreed to feed their cat and pick up their mail.

I also cleared their entire driveway following 16 inches of accumulated snowfall. I love to do that kind of job, was glad to do a good deed and thought that the lady of the house would appreciate it when she'd returned home on January 1st.

She and her husband eventually got back, but we never heard a word from either of them. No phone call, no text message (as they usually do), nothing at all. Since, I did the work, I even wondered if I had done something wrong and their silence was a way of expressing their dissatisfaction.

At any rate, this past Wednesday, we came across the husband who stopped his car to ask us if we had gotten “the bag”; no word of thanks for the service I had performed but he said something about “musubi” which sounded like some good food (spam musubi is in fact a popular snack and lunch food in Hawaii composed of a slice of grilled Spam on top of a block of rice, wrapped together with nori seaweed).

At first we were a bit puzzled, and finally it downed on us that he was the mysterious individual who had dropped the infamous tote bag.

I blurted out: “I guess we did, but there was nothing in it!” inferring that I didn't find any “musubi” inside, and that the cheap plasticized grocery bag, which typically costs less than one dollar, wasn't much of a present for recognizing the good job I had done.

He answered “No, there was just a piece of cardboard in it to form a stable bottom!” I just nodded and we resumed walking...