There was a point in time when I was a big city girl. I called Houston home for just under 24 years. The city is huge snd diverse and the traffic, I swear will test your faith in a higher power, but I was younger then. More patient, more invincible, far more removed from getting an AARP card. I eased into my big city life without blinking an eye.
It was in my DNA to be “townsfolk”. I was born and raised in a small town in South Texas. It offered me a great life until my freshman year in HS. A lot happened that fall. I felt like I bit into the apple of knowledge and once I did, there was this instant awareness that a very interesting world existed beyond my small town’s city limits sign. Somehow, I survived the next four years. I graduated from High School on a Friday night and started summer school at The University of Texas in Austin the following Monday morning. I never looked back….but in 2012, my life changed dramatically. I was forced to look ahead. That’s when I decided to go all John Denver and come home to a place I’d never been before.
I moved to a small town in the Texas Hill Country to redeem an irredeemable relationship with my mother. But that’s not the gist of this post. It’s just a circuitous way of conveying a story about an early morning trip to a drive through restaurant to pick up breakfast tacos for the morning news crew.
Wait….what’s breakfast taco you ask? Well Sugarlumps, in Texas, to hell with Wheaties— a taco is the breakfast of champions. The contents of a breakfast taco can consist of countless ingredients, but the most common version is a corn or flour tortilla filled with scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage with cheese as a viable option. They’re ubiquitous in this part of the world, listed on as many menus the the common, vulgar hamburger.
So anyway, the story goes like this:
One very early morning in 2003, it was my turn to pick up tacos for everyone on my shift. In the interest of time, I pre-ordered 24 tacos several hours earlier and gave my name and the time I’d pick them up. I’d done it probably— 50 times before. Why would/should this morning be any different? I approached the drive through speaker and explained my order. As the staffer was telling me everything was ready and that I should move forward, a diminutive man, stocky in physique, somewhat melanated, maybe in his late 40’s, startled me by walking out of the shadows and in front of my car. Was I concerned? Yeah, it was one am on a school night, neither this restaurant or the station were located in the greatest neighborhood on the planet and I was alone in my car, armed only with the uncanny ability to vomit at will. I had no idea what his motive might be, but my fear was short lived.
He just stood there, squinting in the glare of my headlights and making the universal “I’m hungry” sign: he patted his stomach then pointed at his mouth. I drove forward and he stepped back into the shadows. The staffer had the bags of tacos, napkins and hot sauce ready to go at the window. I asked him if he could be a lamb and get two more tacos placed in a smaller, separate bag. A minute later, as I was waiting for my change, I looked in my rear view mirror and still saw his dimly lit image still peaking around the drive through speaker. As I rolled up my window, I looked up and saw this little fellow now standing in front of my car. This wasn’t a small restaurant. He had to have had the speed of Usain Bolt to get from behind my car, around the other side of the building in order to stand in front of my car. We’re talking mere seconds.
I drove a few feet, stopped and handed him his two tacos. I couldn’t see his face all that well, but based on what I could discern, he was fairly ordinary…shorter than average perhaps. Now, what was remarkable though, was his gratitude. He told me “Gracias” over and over again, clutching the bag as if it were treasure. I told him, ”you’re welcome” in Spanish and drove forward to get back on the access road. I stopped long enough to look in my rearview mirror again, fully expecting to see this hungry little guy devouring his tacos. But he was no where in sight.
Now keep in mind, I was leaving an empty, but large, fairly well lit parking lot with vacant lot on one side and the entrance to the freeway access road on the other. Where had he gone? I even put the car in park, and did a 180 in my car seat. He was no where in sight. There hadn’t been enough time for him to have gone anywhere out of my line of sight. Plus, the dining room portion of the place was closed, only the drive through was open.
He was gone. He’d disappeared. Had I imagined him? Was he a phantom beggar? Was this an acid flashback? Could he have been….an….an angel???
To be honest, I still think today what I thought 18 years ago as I short hauled 24 breakfast tacos westbound on I-10: something supernatural…..more Jim Bakker than Ghost Hunters……happened that morning. If so, was this a test of some kind? Does God do this? Does He test our humanity? Did I escape a carjacking (or worse) with my largess? Or was it an everyday act of kindness that happens everyday, just not enough times everyday?
And please note, I’m not very hip, ecclesiastically speaking. I’m a lapsed Catholic with a spiritual side which means I entertain many different facets of faith. And it’s because of my spiritual diversity that I insert a Bible verse right here:
“And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you do it to one of the least of these my brothers, that you do unto me,”
So, what exactly did I experience in the darkness of that early morning? This was a man fir all intents and purposes. He had no wings, nothing ephemeral or typically angelic emanated from him. Angels unawares, as they say. I don’t really know, who or what he was if nothing more than a hungry, penniless man, hoping some stranger in a drive through line at 1:05 in the morning would help quell his hunger. Not tooting my horn here because I can be the biggest bitch this side of the Equator, but helping where and when I can has always been part of my personal belief system and I don’t do it for any reason other than it’s the right thing to do. Nothing about being charitable should require justification, but being uncharitable necessitates an explanation and depending on what you believe, you’ll be explaining your motives for not helping to someone far more powerful than…well, anyone.
”You only get what what you give”
—The Young Radicals and hundreds of others
So, if this little, squatty man was an angel with a thing for breakfast tacos, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. At the time, his earthly charge was a squatty little girl who dug those things, too.
And lastly, if it was an angel-to-errant human encounter, it HAD to have happened at a fast food place that served excellent breakfast tacos. A Buffalo wings restaurant would have been just too on the nose.