Today 50,000 people had a chance to take a knife with great sentimental value to me…and no one did. It made me feel pretty good about people in general.
I went to an air show and stupidly forgot the little Leatherman pocket knife I got for my birthday from my wife and daughter. I carry it around with me everyday, so I didn’t really think about having it until I was standing in the security line. About every 30 seconds, an airman yelled, “If you got a knife, put it in the bin to your right. You can pick it up on your way out, we take no responsibility that it will still be there when you get back.” My heard
For a second, I thought about slipping the knife into my shoe, knowing that if I would put it into that bin, I probably wasn’t going to see it again. There was like 100,000 people at this event with only two major exits and every one of them had heard the airman’s announcement. I put my knife in this bin with about 100 other knives. It was so shiny and new. I felt it looked so much better than everyone else’s. I thought, with this many people, it is not going to last 5 minutes in there. Four other guys were there at the bin, thinking about whether they should just take the 1 hr. round trip back to the parking lot. One guy said that his was a gift from his grandmother. Another guy said his was a Christmas gift from his kids. The two other guys were elderly gentlemen, who were laughing at each other and trying to figure out how to make thier knife look differently than all the others so that if it was there when they came back, they could find it easily.
I left the security area feeling sad, thinking about how I was going to explain to my daughter how I lost her knife. I spent the day at the show with a slight sinking with that something was missing. I felt like going back and checking on it every once in a while. It was just a thing I kept on telling myself, it can be replaced.
Shows over, I go to the bin (which was now four bins full of knives) and guys are shuffling through the bins looking for their keepsakes. In some cases wives and kids are looking for them too. You would hear guys say “Got it!” followed by a little family celebration. After holding my breath for 2 minutes and using the power of positive thinking, I found my knife. I celebrated with a “yes!” and people around me either laughed or looked at me with a bit of envy, since they were still looking. Reunited…with a knife. Stangers respecting other stranger’s stuff. Maybe it was just a type of guy who goes to air shows thing.
Do you have any situations in which you were suprised by the decency of your fellow humans?
Yesterday morning on the way to work I stopped for coffee, and I was trying to enter back onto Grant Road, someone actually stopped and let me out! Hol-eeee CRAP, I was surprised, as I cheerily waved and sped off.
Then today I went to get my hair cut. During the 20 minutes I waited, no fewer than three people were late for their appointments. When the first one walked up late, I braced myself for an uncomfortable situation, as they were obviously very busy and rushed already, and I was searching for a way to look busy so as to not have to observe what would surely be an awkward moment. I was stunned as the first, then the second, then the third were reassured that it was okay, that they’ll be taken back right away, and that it happens to everyone. At a lot of places, coming in late for an appointment will earn you a haughty glare from the receptionist at the least. So I thought it was nice to see people actually being nice to their customers.
I left a pair of binoculars to which I had a great sentimental attachment on the lawn at a huge outdoor concert venue. I called the next day with little hope that they’d have them (they didn’t) but left my name, number, and a description of the binocs and case. A couple of days later, they called me. Someone had found them and turned them in! I was as surprised as I was delighted. Restored my faith in humanity, it did.
A couple of years ago, a buddy of mine left his laptop propped up against the back of his car in North London while he opened the car door and loaded something in. He was distracted as he got into the car, and he drove off, leaving the laptop to fall onto the sidewalk.
About lunchtime his wife heard a knock at the door, and a taxi driver was standing there, holding the laptop, saying “is this yours?”
Hundreds of people must have walked past it during the intervening three or four hours, and not one person stole it; not only that, but one of the people who saw it was honest enough to call on the doors in the area to return it. That story gave me a warm feeling.
We went out to dinner last weekend with a group of eight people, which included a young man on his first trip out from the military hospital after losing his leg last month in Iraq.
When we finished dinner, our server approached us and informed us that a complete stranger had picked up the tab for the whole group. We have no idea who did it, but wow, that was a generous thing to do!
On the last day of our Renaissance Faire, someone evidently left their basket on top of the car at the end of the day and left. We found the basket on the ground, along with a digital camera, pewter goblet, a wallet and loose money all around. Took us a couple phone calls of the “Hi, do you know ___? Could you please ask her to call me?” to track down the owner, but it’s been reunited with a very happy young lady.
When I was a teenager long ago, I found a thick wallet loaded with papers, credit cards, you name it. It also had ten bucks in it, which I kept as a reward (I was a very broke kid) and dropped the wallet in the nearest mailbox. I hope it got back to the guy.
In general, my opinion of my grandfather is so low you’d have to dig to find it. Once during a work trip to Madrid, he found a document case with over half a million pesetas (this was during the '50s: you could buy a large flat for 4 figures) in cash or easily-liquidable papers.
There was a business card attached to the case. He went to the personal address listed in the card and gave the case back to the extremely-grateful bank employee who’d lost it. When the man thanked him on his own behalf and on behalf of the bank gramps, beign gramps (church-burner, priest-killer, among other things… he wasn’t a camp’s Kommisar during the war because he could see which way the wind was blowing and refused), told him “don’t thank me for the bank. I did it for you; for the bank I would have been happy to throw the whle thing into the river.”
I completely forgot to post about this. When Mr. Rilch and I were in Vegas last weekend, my parents met us in the parking lot of our motel. My mom had a couple shopping bags worth of my sister’s discarded clothes to give me, and when we were making the transfer from her car to ours, I dropped Mr. Rilch’s cell. Just when we were going into the restaurant, he realized he didn’t have it. After dinner, we went back to the motel, and there was the phone, on the ground by the car. Almost two hours, in Vegas no less, and no one had taken it or run over it.
