Chocolate-Flavored Compensation

I'm pretty sure these boxes are from the 90s... talk about nostalgia.

I decided to live in the city of Lyon, despite working in the suburbs Ecully and Charbonnieres les Bains, because I’m so lazy. I knew myself, and I knew that if I lived in the suburbs, I would never go out to the city to do anything. But because of this wise decision, my commute to work is a bus, a metro, and a bus again, and I have to leave an hour and a half beforehand, so getting there is no small task. Yet I ventured to work  yesterday to teach a single class, for an hour. I didn’t complain about the fact that its 3 hours of transit (there and back) for one hour of work, because making any money is better than making no money, regardless of how much time is spent on the subway reading Twilight in French (entitled Fascination). So I arrived at work, dropped off my coat, made my copies, went to check my inbox, and found a little note which read “You don’t have your English class today. It has been cancelled!”

This, from a woman who has both my phone number and my email address, yet decided to put a note in my box telling me that I didn’t have work, even though I wouldn’t actually see it until I was at work. GAH.

The only thing that saved me from the temper tantrum that was about to erupt inside my head was the fact that a few moments after I read the note and the implications sank in, a fellow English professor offered me something that made coming to work for no reason entirely worth it: like a magic dessert fairy, she handed me a Girl Scout Cookie. Maybe she saw the dismay on my face, or maybe she just likes delivering joy to people like some saintly goddess, but in my time of need, she slipped a thin mint into my hand and I stared at her in wonder.

Apparently she got several boxes shipped to her from a relative. Whoever they are, I LOVE THEM. Some of my friends in America are still having a hard time tracking down the Girl Scouts, and where they’ll camp out next. Said friends been frequenting grocery stores much more than necessary for totally superfluous items, hoping to spot them. But I got a thin mint! In France!

I spent my hour and a half ride home smiling and satisfied.