Last evening I joined an old group of friends who used to call ourselves the Tuesday Night Supper Club - or TNSC for short - for dinner. We decided that this time I would provide the main course (a pasta with smoked turkey in a tomato cream sauce), another of us would provide the salad, another the bread, and another the dessert.
Since I had the recipe on my iPad, I brought it with me to the store so as not to forget any of the ingredients. All was going well as I made my way through the store until I arrived at the deli counter for the turkey: the deli was out of the turkey that I needed.
Somewhat flustered - and knowing I was going to be late arriving at the house to begin the preparations (my friends would not have minded, but I do not like being late) - I went to pay for my groceries while guessing in my mind which store I should go to next in the hopes of finding the turkey. As I distractedly put the bags of groceries in the cart, I readjusted my iPad in the part of the cart where you would normally put a small child.
After putting the groceries in the car I went to another store to find the turkey. This extra mission was thankfully successful. Since I had all of the ingredients for the pasta, I drove to my friend's house and began collecting the various bags together when I realized that I did not have my iPad. After placing the groceries in the kitchen I returned to the car to look a second time, but still there was no iPad.
I distinctly remembered adjusting in the cart at the check-out and figured I must have left it in the cart when I placed in the corral in the parking lot. We called the grocery store (about an hour after I must have left it behind) - for the Quincyans, the Hy-Vee on Harrison Street - hoping someone turned it in to the customer service desk. No one had turned in an iPad, but the associates would do a quick search and call us back.
Thirty minutes or so went by when the store called to say that, after a search of the carts, no iPad had been found. I described the case the iPad was in (it looked like a book) and the associates said they would search again, at which point I whispered a quick prayer to Saint Anthony of Padua, who has helped me in the past, and marked the iPad as lost.
Another thirty minutes or so later, the store called again to say the iPad had now been found. I could not believe it and had already resigned myself to its being gone. Naturally, I was very pleased and said I would stop by this morning to collect it. Having now the name of the employee who searched so diligently for it, a thank you note and a small gift will soon be on the way. I'm deeply grateful to the employees at Hy-Vee and to the people of Quincy!
The city of Quincy is currently celebrating the 175th anniversary of its incorporation as a city. In how many communities of 40,000+ people would an iPad still be found in a shopping cart some 90 minutes after it was left behind? This is only of the many reasons why I love Quincy!
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