The metal frame of my above ground pool had rusted through sending 4500 gallons of water gushing everywhere. My son Christian and his friend Scott disassembled the remains and the metal frame and posts were put out by the curb. My yard man said he could haul it off and that the city dump would charge $50 to let him dump it there. $50! I thought! Wow. When my pools have broken before I have never had to pay $50 at the dump. My recollection was that the trash men had picked them up before.
I decided to buy a 6 pack of beer for my trash men and hoped that the beer would entice them to pick up the debris. I “saw” the debris GONE. My mental commitment was for the debris to be gone without further effort or expense on my part except for the purchase of the beer.
Before I had time to get to the store to buy the beer, I saw a man pull up by the fig tree that grows by the curb where the debris was placed. The man got out and walked toward the fig tree. “You have got to be kidding me!” I thought. “This guy is going to park his truck, walk over to my fig tree and steal my figs in the middle of broad daylight?”
He reached for a fig. I assertively walked out onto the driveway and said to the man, “NO HIGOS!” The man was Hispanic and Higos is the Spanish word for figs. “NO HIGOS!: I repeated. “THOSE ARE MY HIGOS!” The man held his hands in the air like I was had him at gunpoint. “NO HIGOS!” I repeated. “I only take 2” he sheepishly said.
I walked back in to the house and peered out the window. What saw next brought a chuckle and a reminder that when we hold the thought for something that we want, we may not know HOW it will come to pass. The man loaded all the metal debris into the bed of his truck. The debris was gone, exactly what I had envisioned.
It only cost two figs.
