thanks a latte

at one of my most recent 617 trips to target, i received a coupon on my receipt for a "buy one latte, get one free" at the starbucks in the store. now, i'm a coupon queen, spending a half-hour each sunday poring over the circulars, organizing them into my coupon file, and creating menus around them. quite the experienced coupon user, i am. but this one perplexed me a bit. get a free hot coffee? what am i supposed to do with that? chug the first one, and quickly move on to the next before it's too cold? take the second one home and re-heat it for breakfast the next morning? invite a friend to join me in shopping for household cleaners so she can take part in the offer? still, i tucked it into my "restaurants" section of my trusty coupon holder and figured it probably would sit there until it expired. wednesday was a cold, rainy, nasty day. i walked into target, smelled the starbucks brewing, and figured i could drop $4.05 on coffee as a rare treat to myself. there was a young girl ahead of me (amazing how relative age gets as you grow older -- by young, i mean around twenty) and as she approached the counter to place her order, i remembered my coupon. i tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if she by any chance was planning on getting a latte. she said she was. "well, i've got this coupon here, for buy one get one free. i'm going to get one, so if you want, you can have the free one," i told her. i figured she'd smile, thank me, and we'd go our separate ways. but what happened next surprised me. yes, she smiled, and yes, she thanked me. but then she thanked me again. and again. and then her eyes actually began to well up with tears. she touched my hands and whispered, "you have no idea what kind of a day i've had so far." and then, when the cashier handed her that steaming red cup, she looked at me one last time and said, "this is honestly the nicest thing that has happened to me in a long time." it stuck with me the rest of the day. and let's be honest -- this was no sacrifice on my part. i had a free coupon and was going to spend my four bucks anyway. but it reminded me of how much you get back by doing something completely unexpected for someone else ... kind of like that "pay it forward" commercial by an insurance company that airs on television. what had begun for me as a dreary november day when i had trouble getting out of bed had suddenly become a happy one. and all because this stranger next to me in line at target was so grateful. it resonated with me, especially during this week of thanksgiving. i need to be more thankful for the little things. for our neighbors, who picked up the ten huge bags of leaves chris had raked and moved them to the curb just to be nice. for one of my 17-year old pre-algebra students, who was expelled from his base school for gang-related activity, telling me "mrs. mann, that lesson we did today was awesome." for the small acts of kindness performed by my family and friends and acquaintances that make my life a little easier and a little brighter. and for this stranger, so touched just because she walked out of target on a cold and wet morning with a cup of free coffee.