Gift of the Magi

So I have a friend.  She is a cool, round, older Mexican woman who speaks about as much English as I do Spanish.  She is very involved in her Spanish ward, and whenever we see each other, there is lots of smiling and hugging.  She is great at pantomiming and I can tell that she is spunky and kind.  Last week we were both washing dishes at a stake luncheon and she communicated to me that she really wanted to wash and take home all the hundreds of nice plastic plates that we were all throwing away.  So I grinned at her and we snuck out back and went dumpster diving (literally.. upsidedown, her giggling and holding my legs).  We rescued and then washed hundrds of plates and she was very pleased and grateful.
   Ffwd to last night and we see each other again at a Christmas Charity event where everyone brings their extra stuff and we take two days to organize it, set it up, and display it.  Fills the stake center with wonderful used things.  Then on Saturday, people who need it will come thru and take what they need/want.
   So basicly it is not time to take stuff yet, it is time to sort and organize it.  She and I are working near each other and she waves me over to the jewlery.  On the wall of jewlery, she points out a gaudy, purple, beaded necklace.  "Sooo beautiful!" she says, lovingly fingering it and looking for approval ("eh?  right?!").  I nod supportivly and act out "Can you come get it tomorrow?"  She indicated, with a pouty lip, that she had to work.
   So I got the idea to take it for her.  I was coming tomorrow, but they let in "high need" people first and it would be well picked over by the time I got in.  It didn't exactly feel like stealing.. but I felt the need to be sneaky when I shoved that loud purple necklace into my pocket.  My Beth Brain was already Wizard-of-Oz-Skipping down the mental path of how I would wrap it up and find her at church before Christmas and surprise her.  OOOh it would be so fun.

-- Long night/moving furniture/climbing into the back of trucks/unloading boxes/tie down straps--

I got home and pulled it out of my pocket and had a slow motion movie moment when the plastic purple beads bounced on the floor and scattered as they slipped off the broken necklace..

It was unfixable.  If I hadn't been so tired, I might have tried to recreate it, but I didn't.  I threw it in the trash.    A fitting end to my life of crime, really, but I would have liked to have seen her beautiful wrinkly face when she opened it.