Tickets for 2 please....

Before Bill and I married, I lived in Washington, D.C. and he lived in Minneapolis. A few months before our wedding Bill moved to Dallas and so after our honeymoon I joined him there.

Not too long after our wedding, one of my favorite on stage shows, Greater Tuna, came to Dallas. It’s a show where there are only 2 actors and it’s very, very funny. And I wanted Bill to see it.

Now we were 23 years old, we had a honeymoon we were still paying for and I didn’t have a job. Financially speaking things were what you might call “very tight.” Like we had no money.

So we didn’t think we could see the show.

But, not being one to let little details like money stand in my way, I suggested we go on by the theater to just kind of, you know, see. Bill thought this was ridiculous but being the sweet man that he is, he drove past the theater.

I knew in D.C. they offered 1/2 price tickets just before the show. They were standing room only tickets, but you still got in. Bill reminded me that 1/2 of nothing is still nothing and since we had nothing, why bother even trying to buy a 1/2 price ticket. I told him I’d never been very good at math and so I just wanted to inquire.

He dropped me off at the corner and said he’d circle the block as he was quite sure he’d be picking me up and heading home very shortly. You know - right after the ticket agent explained math to me.

So up to the window I proceeded. And apparently there is no such thing as a 1/2 price ticket in Dallas because she kind of looked at me like…“you’re not from around these parts, are you?”

So I slunk back to the corner ready to go home.

And as I was waiting, I was approached by a police woman who asked in her police woman voice….“were you just trying to buy tickets to the show?”

And for a second I panicked.

Because I wasn’t sure how they defined ticket scalping and so I wasn’t sure if I was about to be arrested for a crime I didn’t mean to commit. I seriously had to compose myself before I answered. I ran through the scenario in my mind of whether asking for 1/2 price tickets constituted something illegal.

I decided it didn’t and so I told her yes. And just to be sure she understood I wasn’t a criminal I told her the whole story. About how I just wanted to check even though we didn’t really have the money for the show.

And then she pulled out two tickets. Front and center…practically the best seats in the house.

And she gave them to me.

She said a man and his wife walked into the theater and gave her the tickets and instructed her to …“give them to someone she thought could use them.”

And by the time Bill turned the corner I was a huggin’ that police woman like she was my guardian angel. I told her the whole story and about how I thought she was thinking I was a scalper and how I wasn’t and about how we had no money and about how this was so great.

And Bill pulled up and I told him to park the car. We had ourselves a show to see.

We had the best time. We sat next to our generous benefactor and his wife and he and Bill even had lunch a time or two after that.

It was what you might call a miracle. A very cool miracle.

And it was just another time I thought God must just absolutely delight in doing stuff like that for us.

Kind of makes you want to give a standing ovation, doesn’t it?