Got a nice e-mail from my friend Jerome in response to this post. I enjoyed it so much I thought I would share it with you. (BTW, the “Pegasus Parade” he is talking about is a popular pre-Kentucky Derby event held in Louisville, where he and his lovely family lives.)

In all seriousness though, I’d like you to do something today. Take a minute or so to thank God for the gift of prayer. Reading your entry last night when you were up late and everyone else was asleep made me think that you probably had a nice talk with God at some point.

Yesterday was the Pegasus Parade. I was really excited because the kids are old enough to enjoy a parade, Melissa’s been wanting to go, and our new office is 2 blocks away from the parade route.

I bought tickets for reserved seating because I wanted it to be special for the kids, we didn’t have time to sit downtown all morning to save ourselves good seats, and I didn’t want the hassle of trying to see over people. The tickets I bought were on the south side of the street near the parade’s beginning. So we walk down there — NO SEATS. No nothing.

The north side of the street has bleachers, seats and signs showing where people are supposed to sit. I tracked down some parade volunteers and they told me that there was some kind of mix up and that there was no such thing as south side seating. They had several other people ask about their seats too. They pointed out a group of people who were in a similar situation and told me to wait with them because one of the parade organizers was going to speak with them shortly.

The organizer came over and apologized. He said that they were going to set up chairs for everyone who had tickets. Melissa knew what was going to happen. There were people sitting there all day saving their spots and they were gonna be pissed off when the derby people came to set chairs out. She was right. So here we are with about 40 other people and we are being cussed out by all these other folks as we were being seated. It was then that Melissa said a prayer to deliver us from this bullshit so we could enjoy the parade. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, this woman wearing one of the Derby Festival Blazers pulls Melissa and the kids and me to some open seats on the other side of the street away from all the swearing rednecks. We ended up having front row seats and a great time. Angels appear as just people who do good things for others.

And to illustrate further that the show “My Name Is Earl” is really on to something with the whole karma thing … this morning I woke up still pretty pissed off about the whole ticket-seating mix up. I was prepared to call the Derby Festival people up this morning and give them a sample of the tongue lashing we got yesterday. Then while driving to work, I prayed. I had a nice conversation with God this morning and remembered how great a gift prayer is … I called up the Derby Festival office, calmly explained what had happened and kindly asked for a refund. They were very accommodating and apologetic. I thanked them for getting the chairs set up for us. They apologized again and said they would issue us a full refund. Because I stopped to pray about it this morning, I’m not fuming about it today.

I can’t imagine what those other folks are feeling. There were several other people who were screaming that they were gonna give the ticket people a piece of their minds and that they demanded satisfaction. I’m sure that many of them called up the same people I called and harassed the hell out of them. I’ll also bet that they hung up STILL enraged about it.

I guess whatever happens in life you can choose to make something positive out of it or negative. But prayer is an important part of life, and a gift from God that, like golf and sex, you don’t have to be good at to enjoy.