The Cookie Thief

The Cookie Thief 

A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops.
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
That the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be.
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
As the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye."

With each cookie she took, he took one too,
When only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other;
She snatched it from him and thought... oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he's also rude,
Why he didn't even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat,
Then she sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise,
There was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
The others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

How many times in our lives, have we absolutely known that something was a certain way, only to discover later that what we believed to be true ... was not?

Although this famous poem was not written by someone Jewish it has a very profound Jewish lesson in it.

Dan L’kaf Zchus. Being careful to judge others favorably and not jumping to conclusions. This is not something that is easy to do but I did read somewhere a piece of advice offered to make it easier to judge other people favorably.

When it comes to something you are doing that may look wrong to others, it is easy for you to come up with excuses or reasons why it happened. I was tired. I didn’t notice she needed my help. I forgot. I made a mistake. It didn’t happen the way she saw it – there’s another whole side to my story that she doesn’t even know about.

So when someone else does something that looks doubtful, that makes you wonder how she could have said or done that thing, you can literally put yourself in her shoes and imagine what kind of excuse would you have come up with if this happened to you?!

It’s always easy to think of excuses for our own (mis)deeds. So that’s how you can think of excuses for others-simply imagine yourself in that situation.

Then it won’t be so hard to figure out why that perfectly religious looking girl walked into McDonalds. Maybe she needed the bathroom. Maybe she needed change for a bus. Maybe she was thirsty and wanted a bottle of coke. What other reasons might she have walked into an obviously non-kosher store? It may seem a little hard for you but if it you did it, you would surely be able to come up with a few reasons to explain yourself!

You can use this piece of advice anytime you see someone you know doing something a little “off”.