Johnny's Soft Pretzel Miracle

I tell this story knowing full well that it makes me sound cheapity cheap cheap.

I took my two older boys shopping on Saturday for clothes and shoes.

We went to KMart. Not because I like KMart or even because I thought I would find what we wanted there, but because I saw the huge STORE CLOSING sign on the outside and thought I might find some screaming deals.

We walked in the door and were greeted by a woman who said, robotically, "Welcome to KMart. Would you like to buy a soft pretzel for $1 to benefit [charity John knows nothing about]." I said no thank you and kept walking. As we walked away, John asked me if we could please get a pretzel. I said no to him and kept walking. "Aww," he said.

We shopped. Found some t-shirts and prepared to pay for them. At this point, it was necessary for us to pass the pretzel table again.

John said, "Mom, can we please get a pretzel. Just one. It's only a dollar. Charlie and I will share it."

I kept walking. "And where should I take that one dollar from? From our family food budget, where I only have ten dollars left for the month?"

"No, take it from our clothes budget. We'll have plenty of extra, and I don't mind if I have to get one dollar less of clothes."

No. I explained to him that when we budget that money for clothing, we need to discipline ourselves and only spend it for that to be sure we can get all that we need. He wasn't buying in to my reasoning, as evidenced by the fact that he asked me if we could buy a bag of candy we passed and that he pointed enthusiastically to the king-sized candy bars that were also a dollar.

His argument really boiled down to "It's only a dollar!" I have to confess that it probably would not have mattered to their clothing budget to spend that dollar on a pretzel. I doubted myself just slightly as we left that crazy KMart, but I reminded myself that it's much easier to live with those occasional doubts than it is to start saying no again to a child when once you've given in to their out-of-budget demands.

We went on. To the mall. JCPenney yielded no results, but when we got to Sears, we struck gold. Shoes for Charlie and shorts for John.

As we waited in line to pay, I began to hear a whisper. A rumor around me. One Sears employee was telling a customer that they were having a demo day and as part of that, were offering free bottles of water and free [voice trailed off] in the [voice trailed off]. Hmm.

Then I heard it again. Something was going on. Something free was being given away. Somewhere nearby.

But no one said it to me. Hmm.

As we continued to wait in line to pay (this is Sears, remember? Think: slow. Slow-moving lines. No sorry, however slow you just thought? It's slower than that.) I looked at my two boys. We'd been shopping more than an hour and a half. There was still more I wanted to get done, but I knew these two wouldn't make it much longer. How to get them a second wind? Dared I try one more shopping stop with them?

As we walked out of the store, I decided. I would try to find this free something and see if it would help. I spoke to a Sears employee. It was something like this: "Someone said something about free water bottles and free . . . ?"

"Soft pretzels! Yes."

"Where?"

She directed me. I turned to my boys. "What do you say, should we go check it out?"

"Yes," they said.

We walked to the parking lot and saw the somewhat sad little table display and the rows of riding lawnmowers they were demo-ing. The man was friendly and visibly perked up when he saw my bag indicating that I had purchased something from Sears. "Thank you for shopping at Sears. Would you like a soft pretzel?"

"Are they free?" I had to ask.

"Of course they're free! Thanks again for being a Sears customer!"

He gave pretzels to my sons and we thanked him and walked away. As they delighted in this unexpected treat, I seized my moment to connect the dots for them, for John especially. We get blessings when we stick to our budget. Things will work out, and our discipline always pays off somehow or another.

I don't know why this happened, but I sure am glad when life reinforces what I'm trying to teach my children. I may or may not be learning something along the way. And it makes me happy to view such things as miracles.