The Best Friend in the World

You see, on Wednesday night, my husband and I were out enjoying an evening of Idaho Steelheads hockey. We had some nice seats on the upper level, right along one of the blue lines. We had food, we had drink. We were merry. 

The one sore spot happened near the end of the first period when a bunch of rowdy men sat behind us, loudly talking about how they did not, in fact, have tickets for this section. They also had a tendency to stand during the action, which is, during hockey games, an offense punishable by removal, and removed they were. One of them, whilst departing, even managed to kick my hat off my head – an action for which I received neither acknowledgement nor apology. 

Those men having left, I looked back at the stretch of empty seats behind us and saw on the floor a dollar. 

Now, this dollar may or may not have been there before the rowdies. It may have fallen from the row above. One simply can’t know the provenance of a dollar bill resting on the floor of an arena. Well, let me correct that statement. I can’t know it. 

But I met someone who can. 

The Best Friend in the World.

Because, you see, when I got up and snagged that dollar from underneath those empty seats, and then walked back to hand the single dollar to my husband, she stalked over to us, brimming with righteousness.

“That’s my friend’s money!”

She knew. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she knew that dollar belonged to her friend. And, being such a good friend, she couldn’t let one single dollar pass into the hands of random strangers at a hockey game unchallenged.

We didn’t really know how to react – we were not prepared to interact with such devotion. My husband handed her the dollar without a word and I, well, I had been drinking and I may have been hard pressed to keep from giggling at her quest for a single dollar that she somehow knew belonged to her rowdy friends. Drinking can make one unaware of such brushes with greatness.

And so later, when two of the six rowdy friends returned, she gave them that dollar.

I know it was only a dollar, but I like to believe that they were warmed by her gesture. That they knew themselves to be in the presence of a person endowed with greater compassion and conviction than they deserved.

Could there have been, after all, any truer display of Great Friendship? I submit there could not.