Have you touched someone's life....?

Many have, but here's one. My marriage was over and I was fleeing from Pennsylvania at the invitation of a gay couple in Mobile, AL I'd met playing bridge online.

Halfway I realized what money I had might not get me to Mobile, but it might not get me home either, so I was scrimping. I stopped for coffee at a truck stop and this poor man beside me, stuck while his truck was being repaired, asked what my story was and I poured out the whole sad tale. When I finished, I apologized and went to the bathroom, foolishly leaving my purse slung over the stool.

When I got back, my confidante was gone, but the waitress set a huge breakfast before me. I stammered that I couldn't pay. "Your friend did," she said. So I ate, thinking, "what a nice guy!"

Back on the road, digging in my purse for a Chapstick, I found a piece of folded paper. It was a note, wrapped around a $50. It said, "When you get back on your feet, and you will, just pass it on."

A few months later I was getting a haircut in S. Carolina and the beautician did the same thing to me I did to the poor guy at the truck stop. She had left an abusive husband and was trying to keep her head above water with two kids and no child support. So I passed it on.