I've been asked a lot of things by a lot of different people in my life. Giving advice, lending a hand, being politely asked to leave..., they are all generally of a similar class of requests such that not many are ever a surprise anymore. That was true most of my life until as of late. Now I'm getting surprised all the time. Here's some examples.

Looking for any and every excuse to drive my truck, I took my kids to a birthday/costume party. In a few minutes parents were asking for kids to pose in and on the truck. Why not?

A couple weeks later, again looking for an excuse to drive it, we used it to go to the local Chili Cook-off. It was pretty easy to just put the old slow cooker in the back and drive over. I stopped to drop off my entry and then went and parked. Within 30 minutes the organizers were looking for the owner of "that old black truck". They wanted to park it in the middle of the event for ambiance. Well, ambiance and picture poising. So many people wanted to crawl in and out of it, my view was obscured more than once.

The wife bought a new mattress and box spring from Sears but refused to pay the $80 delivery charge. She was going to bring it home on the top of the Ford Escape. I mentioned that I had a truck which she had not considered. Not sure why she didn't - too "special?". We laughed.

So we drove down to the outlet, tied the new items up and headed home. Near home I was trying to make a lane change but was blocked by some lady in a car. She kept matching my speed! I finally just decided to turn right. She ducked in behind us and followed. I remarked to the wife that if she pulled along side that the truck was $17,5k firm. We laughed and turned left. The lady followed.

A couple of stop signs later, the car behind us pulled up and waved for my wife's attention. Seems she was getting married Saturday and wanted to be taken to the church and reception in my truck. My dirty, old, smells like gas, farm truck. If you would have seen her smile, heard her excitement, you wouldn't have said no either.

What to charge her got me thinking about one of 48Dodger's blog posts. The question was about being able to put a proper the price on our parts or services. I was struggling with that and it took me a while to come up with a clear answer for myself.

In the end I didn't charge her a penny. Couldn't really. There was no price on a blushing bride, clearly happy about going to her wedding in an old farm truck. There was no payment large enough for the looks on people's faces, the thumbs up, as we passed them on the way to the church. You certainly could never have found enough of any payment of any kind for the entire church gathering's collective look as we drove off with the newlyweds in the front cab.

I got paid with this story. With smiles. Good feelings all around. I'm lucky enough to be in a position to make some people happy.

Whether you know it or not Tim, you do the same thing for a lot of people here. Did for me.