Today I ate Taco Bell.
I ordered my favorite $3 nachos and devoured them with a side of spicy potatoes!
Nachos have always been one of my favorite foods. Matt and I even served a nacho bar at our wedding! When it comes to chips, cheese, and whatever other toppings happen to be available, I don’t discriminate. I’ll take chicken or beef or pork. I like barbeque nachos, Mexican nachos, or vegetarian nachos.
And of course, I love the Taco Bell Cravings Value Menu nachos for $2.99. I usually get a few sauce packets to add, too.
Just a few.
Except for today, when the cashier added 64 packets of sauce to our bag. This is not an exaggeration–I counted! There were 64 packets of hot, fire, and diablo sauce filling my bag, completely submerging the box of nachos! It was way more than I needed. These packets will last me for a long time. It was more than I asked for. I just wanted 2 packets of each kind of sauce. But here I am, hours later, still thinking about these 64 packets of hot sauce.
Why did they put this many in? Was it an act of generosity? An act of apathy? Were the packets about to expire and they needed to get rid of them? Was the cashier moving so fast they didn’t notice? Did they misread the ticket that said two packets? Maybe the ink in the receipt printer was out, so it came through like a “7” instead of a “2” and they subconsciously added a “0” to it?
There are so many reasons things happen the way they do, especially when people are involved. This could have been a calculated decision by the cashier, or just an oversight. It could have been planned or completely random. When people are involved, things happen that cannot be explained.
There are so many ways we can respond to things like this, too. I could have gotten mad at them for wasting the packets. Or I could be grateful for an unexpected abundance of hot sauce. I could leave the drive-thru and never think about it again. Or I could write a blog post about it.
The point is, there’s so much that happens that we can’t explain but that we respond to. Every reaction, even brushing past it, is a response. And we always get a choice on how we respond.
Thankfully, we can also choose to change our response if we aren’t proud of ourselves for the initial reaction.
Today I ate Taco Bell. I had a delicious nacho dinner sprinkled with two packets of hot sauce. As silly as it sounds, I was reminded that weird things happen and I get to choose how to respond to them.
Today, I’m responding by sharing it with you.
