Taxi service

Mark's classmate, the sort of strange one that gets rides from us sometimes, followed Mark to our meeting point yesterday.  He's not really Mark's friend, he just knows Mark is the kind of kid who will ask his mom to give a ride to someone else.

He climbed in and said, "Remind me of your name?  I forgot your name."

"Thelma."

"Telma or Velma?"

"Thelma."

"What year is this van?"

I told him.

He said, "Will you take me to the elementary school?"

"Sure.  Which one."

"The Tigers."

"Which one is that?"

"Central?" He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

So we drove him there.  On the way he pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket and promptly dropped it.  He picked up what he could find.

"Um, Mark?  I dropped two coins in your car so if you find them later will you give them to me?"

Mark said yes.

He said, "Do you have younger brothers and sisters?  Will you tell them?"

Mark said, "I'm the youngest."

"Oh, good." Apparently you can't trust younger brothers and sisters.  Then I think he started questioning if he could trust any of us with his two lost coins. "Hey," he said sheepishly, "I don't mean to offend you, but are you...religious?"

"Yes," I said.  Then, since it's Utah county and I thought it would put his worried mind at ease, I said, "We're Mormons."

"Oh, good!" he said.

To hopefully avoid further entanglements with this kid, when we got to the school, I had Mark pull the seats out of the back so the guy could reach his coins.

"Well, bye!" he said as he walked away.

You can't make some stuff up.