And the dish ran away with the spoon.

The Bug and I went to the state fair again on Monday, lured by thoughts of sampling more fair food (me) and riding the little roller coaster (him). This time we went with some friends and their children, which made my life a lot easier, since the Bug is at that in-between height where he is tall enough to go on the rides but not always willing to go by himself.

So after hundreds of trips through the Indiana Jones maze and other delights, the Bug wanted ice cream and everyone else wanted cream puffs. We split up on our separate quests, agreeing to meet back at a designated spot in a few minutes. The Bug and then I walked to all the way to the other end of the fair before he informed me that he now wanted the “curly” ice cream, meaning the soft-serve swirly cone, back where we had started out. After a suitable meltdown on my part, we wound our way back to the swirly cone booth and got a towering cone of chocolate ice cream. Oh yeah, and I got a funnel cake with chocolate sauce. And no napkins, because being at the fair makes you stupid.

As we wove through the masses of fair-goers to get to our meeting place, I worried that I would lose the Bug in the crowd. I shouldn’t have bothered; the throngs opened before him like he was Moses parting the Red Sea. Never underestimate the power of a 4 year old carrying a massive quantity of chocolate ice cream at adult crotch level.

Finally we got to the bench, and at that point I turned around to look at the Bug. He was carrying his cone aloft like the Olympic torch, and the whole thing was melting down his arm in a “see, global warming is real” kind of way. And did I mention, I had no napkins?

“Here, give it to me,” I snapped. “I’ll put some of the ice cream on my plate.” The problem was, I had no way to do that, short of poking it off the cone with my fingers, or turning it upsidedown, and then how would the Bug eat it before it turned to soup? I was cursing under my breath when I noticed the elderly lady sitting at the other end of the bench. She was small with wrinkled brown skin, and she smiled at me gently.

“I think I have just what you need,” she said, and from her pocket she produced a white plastic spoon. My jaw must have dropped, because she added, “It’s clean, I just picked it up at a booth. I don’t know why I did that – I didn’t even need it.”

I thanked her profusely, gushing like an idiot, “You must have been sent from heaven!”

“It IS funny,” she told me. “I was just sitting here asking God what he wanted of me today.”

Oh, great, I thought. Here it comes, the witnessing or the Bible-thumping or whatever nutty message I was going to be forced to endure. Hellfire and brimstone: it happens to me all the time. Even a plastic spoon can’t come without strings attached when you look like are a heathen.

“He told me it was all in the little things,” she continued. “And then along you came with your little one. Now I’ll have something to testify about in church. Thank you!”

And that was all she said.

I thought about her words, and especially her thank you, as I transferred the ice cream onto my plate and handed the Bug the Heavenly Plastic Spoon. Why should I be so quick to be crabby about something that obviously made a sweet elderly woman feel happy and fulfilled? And if there is a God, why shouldn’t He or She take the time to save me from a melting ice cream disaster? Or maybe the whole thing wasn’t really about me and my anti-religion issues at all; after all, we, with our gooey mess and desperate need, had made her day as much as she had made ours.

Like the Grinch, I felt my curmudgeonly little heart grow three sizes that day. I don’t know if God sent that spoon or that woman or what the heck it was all about, but sometimes a moment of genuine human contact has a touch of the divine.

Too bad God didn’t remind her about the napkins.