today's mitzvah is accomplished

We're on our way to the hometown (for the solar eclipse, natch) and pull off at a convenience store at an unaccustomed exit when the prince has to pee. He and his dad go to the gents' but the ladies' is closed for cleaning, which after a couple of minutes an employee comes out and says it's going to be a long while because they're cleaning up from where someone was extravagantly sick and didn't tell anyone. 😳 She moves on to mopping up the route the unfortunate visitor had taken through the store ("Oh my god, it's all over the bottom of the doughnut case") and her younger colleague comes out, heads back to an office room and returns with a screwdriver (!), goes back into the ladies', audibly retches, emerges again with his shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth, heads back to the office again, and returns with a box of plastic gloves. By this time I was ready: "I have a mask still in the wrapper," I say, removing this object from my bag. "Do you want it?"

Usually you offer to do something nice for a stranger and there's at least one round of are-you-sure-no-really-it's-no-trouble. Not this time: This poor kid with the mop bucket said "Oh my god, yes please, thank you so much, a life saver."

And then my family returned from the gents' and I said we're going somewhere else for lunch. 😛