Gratitude journal: A ticket and a kaleidoscope

I forgot to write a gratitude journal last night, so this post will include things from yesterday and today. Yesterday, I was grateful for my Patriots season ticket, which I hung around my neck as I emptied my rental car and returned it to Enterprise. The woman at the counter saw the ticket dangling from its plastic sheath and asked if I had attended the game on Sunday.

Five minutes later she told me that she was giving me a 25% discount on the cost of the rental.

“Patriots fans need to stick together,” she explained.

I was then driven to Pep Boys by another Enterprise employee who was also a Patriots fan. We talked about the game for the entire ride.

When I arrived at Pep Boys, I was met by the manager who I had been coordinating my repairs for the past several days. The job was two days overdue, and he knew that the delay had been forced to rent the car in order to attend the Patriots game on Sunday. He is also a Patriots fan, and after chatting with him about the game for fifteen minutes, he reduced my $2,300 head gasket repair bill by more than $400.

When his boss asked him about the reason for such a large discount, he said, “Customer satisfaction. And he’s a Patriots fan.”

Season tickets aren’t cheap, but they saved me a lot of money yesterday. In fact, they made up for almost half their cost.

Tonight I am grateful for my daughter’s love of her kaleidoscopes.

Clara listens to recorded books, uses an iPhone and iPad with surprising ease and even pounds away on our keyboards from time to time, but she is still mesmerized by something as simple as a kaleidoscope.

A good reminder of the simple pleasures of life.