I was walking down the The Drag in Austin, Texas. (If you haven’t been to Austin, here’s a note on The Drag: it’s the strip of Guadalupe Street adjacent to the UT campus.)

I decided to walk through the alley instead of walking on Guadalupe because all the dumpsters are in the alley. As I walked down the ally, I checked the dumpsters for anything that looked promising.

I found a big sack of big cookies from Potbelly Sandwich Shop in one of the dumpters. I am not even entirely sure how I found those cookies.The big paper sack full of cookies was in a black plastic trash bag, not something I would usually open.  Some intuition made me rip open the trash bag and shake the paper bag I found inside. The paper bag was really heavy, which was kind of strange. It didn’t feel like it had trash in it. So I pulled the paper bag out of the garbage bag and looked inside.

It was full of individually wrapped cookies. Big cookies. Big chocolate brownie cookies and sugar cookies and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I thought maybe the cookies were really old and not any good. I pulled one out of the bag, opened the packaging, and started eating it. Delicious. No problem. Maybe the cookies had been baked the day before and instead of selling them at half price or giving then away, they had been dumped in the garbage. SIN!

I started walking down the alley with my paper sack of cookies. I hadn’t taken ten steps when I saw a bunch of traveler kids hanging out on a side street, just barely around the corner from the alley. I walked over and started handing out cookies. It made me so happy! (I think those kids were pretty happy too!) I felt so good sharing those cookies.

Photos courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/macro-photography-of-pile-of-3-cookie-230325/.