Last night, I was wending my way home at around 1:30, tired, a little drunk, pleasantly content in the night's warmth (ah, Chicago, city of extreme temps), when I decided to pop into the corner store to grab some gum for my bad beer-breath. Went in, grabbed my gum. Ahead of me in line was a very short Mexican boy who had two bags of Dorritos and was looking furtive. He quickly pointed to the condom shelf behind the cashier and asked for the grey package, without looking at me. I decided he was a bit embaressed and looked the other way for him.

When I looked back, the condoms were nowhere in sight and he was sorting through his change to pay for the purchase. His tab was $6.22, and he had five ragged dollar bills up on the counter, then pressed another dollar of dimes and nickels towards the cashier, then wrangled another two dimes up from the depths of his pockets. He got a panicked look on his face and said, "I don't have the two pennies..."

The cashier was looking brutal, and started saying, "Well, you're short..."

At the time, I was digging through my change for my own purchase. Lo and behold, there were two pennies sitting on my palm. Before thinking about it, I picked them out of my change, tossed them on the counter with a flick of my wrist and said, "For Luck."

Must've been the way I said it, because both the cashier and the boy started laughing. The boy picked his stuff up, ran out of the door. The cashier rang me up and then tried hitting on me.

Ain't I the cock of the walk? Some kind of condom-penny angel in the Chicago night streets.