A Blessing in Disguise

   It was in the form of a large rectangular, chewed up piece of foam.  Klaus, my sister-in-law's rambunctious beagle, got to the mattress and tore a good chunk of it up, so Igor’s mom decided to throw it out on the sidewalk.  I looked out our apartment window and wished that the ugly thing could at least have been thrown next to the Pan-American Highway where the garbage is collected.  But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  It was someone else’s blessing. 

   It didn’t take long for an elderly man with kinky white hair, who has lost his mind and often sleeps in the grass across from our place in the median of the Pan-American Highway, to snatch the mattress.  We hoped he could at least get some use out of it.  But when we didn’t see him with the mattress in the median the following nights, we began to wonder what had become of him and the mattress. 

   A week or two ago, while taking a walk at a nearby park, we happened to be curious and look over the high cement walls of a deep, empty fountain.  There we saw a small portion (perhaps a 3^rd of the mattress) inside.  We asked ourselves, if the man could possibly sleep on that.  A few days later we saw him wandering in the park saying nonsense.  At the beginning of this week, we peered into the empty fountain once more and discovered that the whole mattress is not pushed together in a position out of the wind. 

   With a smile on our faces we turned to each other and said at the same time, “He may be crazy, but I’m sure glad he’s found a better place to sleep.  We’d better go so no one else discovers his bed.”  We didn’t see the beauty in that chewed up mattress that lay on the sidewalk, but we’re thrilled that someone else did.