500: An Anthology of Short Stories
The Joy of Giving

Alex regretted his impulsive nature more often than not.

“It isn’t that I’m incapable of thinking things through before taking any action,” he told Jade. “I just tend to follow my emotions more rather than my intellect.”

“How many times haven’t I told you not to follow your heart? You just end up regretting it,” Jade claimed.

“Well, this time I’m sure I won’t.”

“What makes you say that? How do you know that that lady you just gave some money to isn’t a scam artist? What if she tells fifty people the same sob story? By the end of the day, if each of those people gave her R100, as you just did, she would have made an easy R5,000!”

“Jade, it doesn’t matter to me what her motives are, or if she lied to me,” Alex said. “What matters is that I wanted to help her and I did. If she was lying, it’s between her and God. I could spare the money and she looked genuinely in need, so I gave it to her. I haven’t been impoverished by it, and more importantly: I consider it my charitable deed for the day,” the soft-hearted social worker explained.

“Buddy, there’s just no hope for you,” Jade said, shaking her head as she walked to her car.

“We’re still on for dinner tonight at my place, right?” Alex shouted at his friend’s retreating back. Jade nodded in assent without turning around.

The supermarket was crowded as usual at this crazy time of the year, when people seemed to lose their senses as they loosened their purse strings. Alex mentally kicked himself for having forgotten to purchase the fruit cake ingredients earlier in the month.

“I’m glad we won’t have load shedding tonight,” he thought as he stood in the ‘10 items or less’ line. “It should be ‘fewer’, not ‘less’,” he groaned inwardly. He detested grammatical or spelling errors on signs.

“Shouldn’t take me more than an hour to cook the stuffed chicken fillets and crisp the veggies in the airfryer tonight,” he thought in relief. This unplanned side trip to the supermarket could have ruined his dinner preparations if he hadn’t recently invested in a Philips Airfryer Essential, on the insistence of his sister, Beverley.

“It’ll make your life so much easier!” Bev had told him three months ago, persuading him to relent and buy the appliance.

The cashier rang up his few items. “That’ll be R94, sir.”

Alex reached for his wallet, only to realize in shock that his debit card was missing from it. He remembered that he had taken it out last night for an online purchase and forgotten to replace it in his wallet.

Mortified, Alex said, “I don’t have my card or cash on me. Sorry.”

Abruptly, the cash machine beeped. The young lady in line behind Alex had paid by tapping her card on the machine.

Before Alex could object, she said, “It’s better to give than receive, isn’t it? Season’s greetings.”