Small Miracles

This will be the kind of story my daughter Talia has no tolerance for. Her eyes start to roll and her feet head toward the nearest exit. But still I feel compelled to share it here.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I have a flip-phone and even that I only use sporadically. And so I have a $100 plan that works until the money runs out and then must be renewed. My wife usually has done the renewal, so I don’t have the process at my fingertips. So yesterday when I called my colleague in San Francisco from downtown Flemington, New Jersey, our conversation got cut off after the third sentence and a friendly voice said, “There is no more money in your account,” I was left stranded. My wife is in Germany, a computer search revealed no instructions that I should have saved and I kind of needed my phone to work to call my daughter at the other end of my flight home today to see about a ride from the BART Station.

Ever resourceful, I looked online for any nearby Verizon stores, found one in some mall and asked the front desk where it was. Are you still awake here?

It turns out that I need only walk hundred yards down the road, cross a street and enter a mall that began with Chiles. The next store? Verizon! Opening time? 11 am. Time I arrived there? 10:55. And they opened early. Got someone to help me immediately, he started punching some buttons on his device, took my credit card, advised me to hold onto the plan, for if I left, they didn’t offer it anymore. And within five minutes, the deed was done.

That’s my small miracle du jour. Don’t think it will be included alongside turning water into wine or the Virgin of Guadalupe, but hey, we take what we can get.