The Kindness of Strangers Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Our Best Beloved dog Emily died suddenly a few days before Christmas. Naturally we were distraught, but Mr. S still had to go to work that week. He was in the habit of stopping off at a Hardee’s for a coffee and breakfast sandwich during his 50-mile drive to work.

One morning a few days after Emily died, he stopped in for breakfast as usual, still feeling pretty raw and sad. As he got out his wallet to pay, the cashier told him his money was no good today . . . the manager was buying breakfast for all the morning regulars. Merry Christmas.

Mr. S was so touched by this that he called the store later to thank the manager and tell him how much that small gesture meant and why. Turns out the manager was going through a divorce and wanted to do something nice to lift his own spirits. He was glad that it meant so much to someone.

62

I was driving home from work just this afternoon, and was stopped at a red light. A woman started across the street from one side and a man from the other. When the man reached the other side, he picked up a glove from the road and ran back to give it to the woman. I was suddenly struck by the cheerful smiles on both their faces as they continued on their separate ways. One little act of kindness creating multiple happiness.

63

Most people are good. Unfortunately, most of time we are a little blinded/near-sighted by our own life to take an active interest into what others need.

The stuff I have done for others could easily fill a small book (I am compelled to help others - sometimes its more like a curse than a gift I tell you). Anything from loaning people considerable money they never are asked to pay back (and don’t), signing for student loans for the kids of less fortunate coworkers, holding doors open for anybody and their mother, etc…you name it, I’ve done it (and do it obsessively). I believe its my self-appointed purpose. I may be doing it subconsciously to try and validate the worthiness of my own existence.

But enough sunshine up my ass.

My great story of kindness by a stranger is: I took a trip with my aunt/uncle, cousins and brother to Seattle (we lived in Vancouver), and then a couple more hours up to take a ferry ride to Victoria, Canada. We did the ferry and Victoria part only on bikes. Anywho, one day we were shopping for supplies and while my aunt/uncle were gathering and paying, I stood in front of a video game machine drewling to play, but had no money of my own to spend. I was 10.

While I am standing there looking probably quite pathetic and wishful that I would someday play this amazing game, a man on his way out of the store looks at me, hands me a two dollar bill and said “go ahead and play it kid” - and walked out.

I’ve never won a lottery, nor a raffle, and my childhood wasn’t filled with Hallmark moments. His act of random kindness was so impressive that I actually decided no to play the game. I kept his two dollar bill with me, in my wallet for the next 12 years.

I am sure to him, that two dollar bill was nothing to write home about. I however cherished it for years. Even told the story to my once-upon-at-time students during my example of show-and-tell. You never know what sort of impact the smallest example of kindness can have on a person.

The thread is the shit.

64

You ever see a car broken down in the left turn lane? You ever see a guy in a hideous hawaiian shirt running across three lanes of traffic to help push the dead car into a gas station parking lot? Yea that’s me.

My first POS car died on me all the time and I had to rely on strangers’ help to get me out of the flow of traffic. I’ve since bough something better but from then on I will always always stop to help someone at least get their car out of the street so they can fix it/call a towtruck. I remember one woman who was blind with tears of embarrassment and sadness because people were honking at her to move her car, even though I could clearly see steam coming from under the hood. Bastards. I was the only person who stopped to help her get the car into a gas station.

65

This happened many years ago in Benidorm, Spain.

My wife and I had noticed this young couple who just sat in the lobby of the apartments we were staying in, all day every day.
One day I asked them why they didn’t get out, they told me they had spent up, had had nothing much to eat for 2 days and had another day to go before they flew back to the UK.

I gave them £20 told them to change it into pesetas and get some grub, they asked for our address so they could return it when they got home.

I told them it didn’t matter but they insisted. About a fortnight later I received in the mail a cheque for £100 from the parent of the girl.

From that day to this we have exchanged greeting cards and we attended the wedding of the young couple.They lived in Bolton which is only a few miles from where we lived

66

I was in Jewel the other day (I seem to spend most of my time in Jewel), in the cereal aisle when an older woman approached me. I am 5’ 7"–too short to model (we won’t go into the weight requirements for modeling), but taller than the average woman. She was about 5 ft and couldn’t reach the cereal she wanted on the top shelf. I got it for her and she thanked me down the aisle.

I seem to do that frequently for older women. I’m happy to help.

All these stories have been making me reflect on my own life. I love these stories: they have a unique charm. I once had two young guys push me out of a muddy rut I had gotten our old mini-van into during a surprise thaw a couple of winters ago. I didn’t have any money for them, but I thanked them profusely. This thread has me wondering how many small, even minute, acts do we perform or that we benefit from on a daily basis? Surely the world is (overall) a good place.

67

My sister once had her car repoed–the jerk took the car with all it’s contents, which included her baby’s carseat, without giving her a chance to get them out. So it was a two hour trip to Montgomery to get the contents. I drove her and our two kids (with borrowed carseat!) to get her stuff from the agency, which was in a pretty shabby neighborhood. We were ready to start back and my car just died. Oh, great. Two women, with a three year old and an infant, stranded two hours from home in a rough-looking area, and it’s summertime in Alabama. Oh, and I had no cell phone, either.

A man came over to see what the problem was and invited us to come in and use the phone. He also told us we were welcome to stay there until we got help–help that would be at least two hours in arriving. He took us to Hardee’s so that we could buy our kids lunch. When his wife came home from work, she also treated us as welcomed guests. When their daughters got home from school, they entertained the little ones. We had to make repeated long-distance calls before I was able to contact my husband to bring a trailer to tow the car home, and this was before we had unlimited calls for one price deals. We were there for several hours, during which time this family of strangers made us feel at home. They wouldn’t let us pay for the calls, either.

I never saw them again, but I hope that they’ve been greatly blessed over the years. They turned what could have been a frightening, and even dangerous experience into one I remember with warmth and gratitude.

68

I haven’t thought about this for several years, but here we go:

One night, I left the bar and stopped off at the beer store to grab a ‘to-go’ package for home. It was snowing, and this certain parking lot was pretty icy. While I was in the store, a truck hit my car and drove off before I could get the plates. After griping for a bit, I found that I couldn’t get back up the slight slope in the icy parking lot. Not enough grip or interia or whatever. This guy in a white pickup truck was very helpful in very carefully pushing my car with his truck (so as not to do any more damage) and got me up the hill and back out on the road. I wanted to pull over and thank him, but he simply tooted his horn, waved, and drove off the other way.

About two weeks later, it is SNOWING. Hard. I have to get to work. It is about four blocks of poorly maintained side roads before I can hit the rather well-cleared highway and I’m good. Except that between me and the highway is about a 100 yard incline up this monster hill. While I crawl my car to the base of the hill, I see cars in front of me starting to pile up on the sides of the road as their failed attempts to scale this hill leave them spinning and backsliding down.

There are a few good samaritans with huge pickup trucks helping tow people up the hill. They have chains and tow hooks and all that. It takes about twenty minutes to tow each vehicle. When it is finally my turn, the guy waves me off and tells me to stay in my car while he hooks it up. Soon enough, we crest the hill back to level ground and he starts to unhook my car. I get out to thank him and it’s the same guy from last time!

I tried to pay him $20 for helping me, but he wouldn’t take it.

I never saw him again.

69

That is so sweet!
–and thank you, everyone, for a good solid hour of fascinating, heartwarming reading.

70

Several years ago, one of my favorite nephews was in and out of hospitals for a time as doctors attempted a diagnosis. It was just before Christmas and he was in the hospital in Detroit (I think), a few hours from their home. His big brother was on break from high school and came to keep him company so my sister could get some rest. Nephew and big bro were in the elevator at the hospital and struck up a conversation with a man who was visiting a relative. They must have talked about hating the food because, a bit later, he showed up at my nephew’s room with a big bag from McDonalds.

Also during that stay, a church came to sing Christmas carols and hand out toys to the patients. The generosity and concern were much appreciated.

71

Years ago, when car door locks still had heads on them, I locked my keys in the car when I was on a trip in Canada. It was Victoria Day so a locksmith would have been pricey. A passing Canadian pulled a wire coathanger out, and when I was unwinding it to feed it through the window frame and pop the lock, explained how he had locked his keys in a few years before and someone had a coathanger handy. He’d tossed one in his trunk and was thus able to help out.

When I got home, I put a coathanger in my trunk and a couple years later, when I was dozing at a rest stop on a cross-country trip, heard someone exclaim, “Oh, crap! I locked the keys in the car!” I passed him the hanger, telling him about this Canadian, etc. etc. I wonder how far back and forward the chain continued.

72

Once my wife and I were driving across Nevada and the gas gauge was getting low, so we were looking for a place to fill up. There was a sign for gas within our range, so we weren’t too worried. We pulled off the freeway, and found the gas station boarded up. Making it to the next town was iffy, but we saw a couple of guys in pickups chatting, so we went over to ask. They were very friendly and sympathetic, but they didn’t have any way to help us there, however one of them offered to follow us to the next town in case we ran out of gas. It was about 15 miles, but we made it okay. He even stopped and asked if we needed anything else once we got there. We offered him some money for helping us out, but he refused.

Another time we went out to dinner with 3 young children. We’ve been lucky that our kids are quite well-behaved in public, and have frequently gotten comments to that effect. This time when it came time for the check, the waitress told us that another couple (who was gone by then) had paid our bill and wanted us to know how impressed they were with our children’s behavior.

Here’s one I did. We’d just moved into a house in a new subdivision. We’d met some of our “soon to be” neighbors as our houses were being constructed. One night about 11:00 soon after we moved in, I saw a moving truck pull up next door. I was in a terrible mood due to a fight with my wife, and the last thing I wanted to do was go help someone move in at 11:00 at night, but I did it anyway. They were so excited to have closed on their house that they just HAD to sleep there. I helped them get all the beds moved in and set up. Spent about an hour – realized at the end of it my bad mood was totally gone.

73

Kindnesses received: about 8 years old, buying a burger and fries at McDs. Seems the prices went up without me knowing, and I was short a nickel. I was almost in tears, and then a man behind me put a nickel on the counter.

Just a few months ago: a lady at church, knowing I’m a student, asked if I would allow her to give me some money to go buy some new “dressy” clothes (I don’t have much of a wardrobe). She didn’t have much to offer, but she gave me an upper limit of her generosity, and I got some really nice stuff for half of what she was offering. She made me promise I’d never tell anyone…but no one here knows me, so it’s okay. FWIW, money is not an issue (I’m just lazy when it comes to dressing and shopping) but she wanted to do this for me more than I needed it. What a sweetheart.

Kindnesses given: drove a drunk guy home after his girlfriend walked out on him in the bar, leaving him standing in the middle of the street. Wasn’t far out of my way, but he made it sound like I’d given him a kidney or something. When he got home he took my hand, kissed it, and made me promise that I would never do anything like this again. “It’s dangerous to give rides to strangers!” he admonished. Still makes me laugh all these years later.

A guy approached me at a 7-11 asking for money. He pointed to his very pregnant wife sitting on the curb outside and told me their woes…car broke down, new in town, no money, friends can’t come for them until the end of the work day. It was hot, and she needed something to eat. I told him to pick out however much food they needed, and some drinks, and I’d take care of it. He had tears in his eyes. He didn’t take much, just a couple of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of juice. I still feel like I should have done more, but they turned down the offer for a ride somewhere.

My friend had a family of 7 and a lot of stress. They had me over for dinner all the time and I had just received a government rebate check. It wasn’t a lot, but I knew it would buy dinner for their family. I called her, told her not to make dinner, and showed up shortly after with a few bags from KFC. That totally made her day. They all loved KFC but hardly ever had it, so it was a real treat.

Recently at school, was walking by a bus stop at one end of the campus. A lady and her little boy just got off the bus and she was on the phone asking for directions. She looked really lost and said she’d wander around until she found someone to help her. I stopped, turned around and smiled. She’d never taken the bus there before, besides being very new to the city, and needed to be on the other side of the campus. I had a few minutes to kill before my next class, so I walked her to where she needed to be. I felt good about that for a few days.

Merely witnessed by me: A homeless lady got on the Skytrain in Vancouver with no ticket. At the next station a young lady got on and stood near the seat the homeless lady was in. A few stations later the transit police came on and started asking for proof of payment. This lady didn’t even have pockets to pretend to search, so she said she lost her ticket. The transit guys were looking forward to kicking her off at the next station when the young lady near her said, “No, she’s with me. I have another ticket here she can use,” and took an extra ticket out of her wallet. The transit guys didn’t look too happy, but the homeless lady did! That was awesome.

74

I take the bus and I always think it’s funny (in a sad way) when people talk about how the bus is full of nasty people and criminals. I’ve seen more kindness on the bus than anywhere else.

I’ve never seen anyone not be able to get on the bus because they couldn’t pay. And I’ve seen a lot of people who couldn’t pay, including myself once or twice. If someone is short money, somebody or multiple somebodies will help out.

If someone is running for the bus and the bus driver doesn’t notice, people on the bus will usually shout at him or her, “hold on, someone’s still coming!” … same if someone wants to get off and the bus driver closes the back door and starts moving too early… a whole chorus of, “hold on! back door!”

I’ve dropped stuff on the bus and had people chase me to give it back more times than I can count… including cash.

I sometimes ride my bike halfway to my destination and then take the bus the rest of the way and put my bike on a rack on the front of the bus. Probably 60% of the time, someone comes to help me get my bike on the rack. I’m strong enough to get my own bike on the rack without struggling or taking forever and holding up the bus to do it, but it’s nice to have someone help me out.

75

too god damn heartwarming. getting difficult to read because of unexplainable eye-misting problem.

76

When I was 20 (before cell phones were popular) I drove about 30 miles into Georgetown every day for my job in my weensy Dodge Colt hatchback. On one such trip, at about seven at night, my tire blew. I didn’t notice until I started hearing the clanging that told me I was driving on my rim. I stopped and pulled over onto I-95 a little north of Springfield.

Now I am a girly girl, but I knew the basics of what went into a tire so I tried to change it myself. I got the toolkit out, figured out it went on the nut, and tried to twist. Nothing. I tried to get more leverage, so I stood on the bar to push it down with my foot and the nut promptly twisted off and broke. At this point, I felt like an idiot and burst into tears of frustration: maybe I could get the old one off, but I wouldn’t be able to get the new one on if I broke all the lugnuts, and to add insult to injury, it had started to rain.

This is when I was blinded by headlights. A middle-aged man got out of his large sedan and asked me if I needed help. I was raised good and paranoid about strangers, so I started to step away and got ready to run if need be. He saw how upset I was and said
“Hey, my passenger door is open. I have a carphone. Call your Dad and stay on the phone with him so you won’t be scared and I’ll change your tire. You can lock the door if you want, and I’ll stay out here where you can see me.”

I did exactly as he said, telling my father where I was and staying on the phone with my mother after he left to meet me. I was ready to bolt almost the entire time, but the guy changed my tire and gestured from about ten feet away for me to open my window to ask me if I called my dad. I thanked him and, seeing my father pull up, felt comfortable enough to walk up to him and thank him. What I didn’t expect was my Archie Bunker-type, immigrant, suspicious, undemonstrative father thanking him so warmly and asking for his address so he could send flowers. The guy told my father he had a daughter about my age, and he hoped someone would do her the kindness one day if she were in the same situation.

Not only did that man change my tire and show me understanding and kindness, he gave me a rare glimpse into how much my father loved me which, when I think about it, carried me through a lot.

77

Just last night at work…

My friend and I are bartenders and a guy walks up to her and says, “Hey, how much change did you give me?”

She says, “Change for a twenty.”

“I think I gave you a hundred.”

FTR we hear this rather a lot, and 99% of the time the customer isn’t correct. Either they’re too intoxicated to realize what they’ve given us, or they’re trying to pull a scam.

And my friend says she doesn’t recall getting a hundred from this guy–although we have several in our drawer. But what to do? If he’s right, she’s shorting him 80 bucks. If he’s wrong, she’s going to have to pay the drawer back eighty bucks at the end of the night.

He sees the look of distress on her face and says, “Why don’t I write my name and number down and when you do your money later tonight, call me if you find the money?”

She says, “I’m really not trying to scam you…”

He laughs and says he isn’t trying to scam her, either.

We did our drawer around four in the morning, and we were eighty bucks over, to the penny.

So she called the guy and left him a voicemail that he could come pick up the money the next day, apologizing profusely, and thanked him for being so understanding.

I’ve been bartending for years and I’ve never had anybody be so understanding about an honest mistake. The guy was right–which is rare enough–but it’s even more rare that he was willing to leave just his name and number to get his eighty bucks back, never knowing if he’d see it again.

We left the day bartender a note to buy him a drink and a shot on our tab.

What a nice guy!

78

Heh. I remember a New York Times “Seen and Heard Around Town” column many years ago. A well-dressed man got on a bus, asked if it would take him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but then realized he didn’t have enough cash for the fare. Several people leaped to pay for him.

It was Ted Kennedy.

79

Same here, and I do the same thing when I’m having food delivered for myself only.

I ordered a pizza on Friday, the tab was $17 and I gave the kid $25. I really didn’t consider this too excessive and it’s the same tip I usually give.

The kid takes the money without looking at gives me a half-hearted thanks. Then, as a close the door I hear a …WOW…THANKS AGAIN…accompanied by a full fledged whoop of joy.

80

Yesterday I was standing in the checkout line. I had burned my finger last month, and I was peeling off the skin. Suddenly my finger started bleeding.

When I bleed it is like a horror movie. I’m standing there trying to stop the bleeding. When I get to the clerk I ask if she has a Kleenex.

She went to another register and got me some paper towels, probably to keep her stand from being washed in blood. Then the person behind me asked if I needed a ride to the hospital. I didn’t but it was a nice gesture.