Life in a nutshell

A couple of weeks ago I went to buy some skis for my daughter. She's a good skier and I wanted to get her this one pair and then never have to do it again, so I decided in advance I'd get her something good that she could use for many years. When we get to the store, it turns out that her boots that I thought I had to replace were fine, saving me a lot of money, so I spend some of it on her skis. So it turns out she's getting an awesome pair of skis.

They tell me I can pay then or when I pick up, so of course I said I'd pay later, because I don't have to worry about having my mom or dad there to pay for it. They note this on the tag and send them off to have the bindings mounted.

I go to pick them up tonight and the guy pulls the tag off the skis and says, "Did you buy them here?" and I say yes, so he says it would be $21.20 for the mounting. I sign the receipt, he says thank you, and I say, "I'm probably going to be the most honest customer you've ever had, but I never paid for the skis." There's 4 of them behind the counter and they look at me dumbfounded, and I say, "Well I'm sure someone would have eventually noticed that you were missing an expensive pair of skis that never got paid for and someone would have gotten in trouble." And they all shook their heads and said, "No way, they never would have known." I looked at the tag and it really looked like the "Not Paid" referred to the mounting, not the skis themselves.

So they give me a big discount on the skis for being an honest customer and even carry them out to the car for me. I save a couple hundred dollars and feel good about myself. And I feel so good about myself that I momentarily lose focus while I'm driving and almost hit a pedestrian.

I can't think of a pithy moral for this, but "Be an honest person and, for God's sake, pay attention when you're driving" will do.