I was in line to pick up some pictures at the local pharmacy. The store had a policy where you only paid for the pictures you wanted. Presumably, most people like me just buy them all rather than sort out 5 pictures here and there to save $1. The store just throws the unwanted pictures in the trash.
There was a mother and a young girl (~8 years old) sorting through pictures. They were apparently deciding which pictures to take. They weren’t eliminating bad shots or poorly processed ones. They were agonizing over which pictures they could buy with the few dollars the girl had. I mentioned that this one picture was really nice (it wasn’t), and that it’d be a shame to not keep the work of a budding photographer*. I asked how many pictures they had and asked if I could buy them. Best $5 I ever spent.
I don’t recall my exact words, but the story is better this way.
My car broke down in the far left lane of “The Connector”, a very busy interstate highway on morning during rush hour.
A guy stopped his car, got out and with the help of a few other really kind drivers stopped traffic, then pushed my car all the way to the right where I could wait safely for the H.E.R.O truck to arrive.
He jumped back into his car and drove off before I could properly thank him.
He saved thousands of people behind us from what would have been a horrible traffic snarl and got me out of danger.
I wish I knew his name - I didn’t even get his license tag#. He was a true hero.
I’ve got a few - both that I’ve done and that were done for me.
Years ago when I was a kid my mom and sister and I were driving back to Dallas from visiting my grandmother in east Texas. Along the way the car started acting funny so mom pulled into a Dairy Queen in some small town. Well I don’t think she’d had the hood up for more than a minute before there were about 5 or 6 old farmer types in their gimme caps and cowboy hats gathered around trying to figure out what the problem was. I can’t remember what was wrong but those guys got us back on the road.
I lived in Austin for a few years and while out with my dog in a park found a pager somebody had dropped on the path. I can’t really remember now how I got the owner’s number off it but I was able to phone him and let him know I had the pager. I met him at a nearby 7-11 to give it back and he turned out to be a cute guy with two lovely dogs in his pickup truck. We chatted for awhile and he even asked me out for dinner! Looking back I wish I’d said yes but I think I was dating somebody at the time.
I live in Scotland and last year I had to travel by train to Newcastle, in England. While waiting in the station to catch the train back up, I decided to get a drink from a kiosk that sold cookies and, well, drinks. There was a young man in front of me and he was having some sort of payment problem. Turns out he only had Scottish banknotes and the silly twit behind the counter wouldn’t accept them! I know she doesn’t have to legally, but come on. Anyway I happened to have Bank of England notes so was able to trade one out with the guy and he went happily on his way.
A few years ago my husband and I were in Houston visiting his sister. We were driving along a busy four-lane road on a scorching hot day and saw a woman in a really beat-up car stopped in the center turn lane. She had a flat tire and was obviously struggling to get the tire off with traffic whizzing by on both sides. Nobody was stopping to help - we even saw a police car pass by without stopping. Anyway we turned around and pulled up behind her and my husband changed her tire while my sister in law and I kept the woman’s two small children amused - they’d been about to get out of the car!
My husband and I were hiking up Yosemite Falls. We’d just started to come back down when I slipped and fell, breaking my leg just above the ankle (although I didn’t know at the time that it was broken - just that something was very much not right!). I tried to hobble down but with the distance we had to go it was soon evident that there was no way we could do it without assistance. A couple of guys coming up the trail used their cell phone to phone the mountain rescue guys, and then another guy, who turned out to be a park employee on his day off, made a rough splint out of a couple of sticks and some t-shirts donated by the phone guys. This guy then abandoned his own hike on his day off to take turns with my husband carrying me piggy-back down the mountain until the mountain rescue guys finally met us on the way up. We got his details and sent him a snazzy new rucksack when we finally got home.
I ride taxis a lot to get to the train station, and twice this has happened: I realize after I’m in the cab that I don’t have enough cash, and tell the driver to pull over because I’m short, and the driver says, no problem, I’ll take you anyway. In one case he wouldn’t even take the few dollars I had on me. I always try to tip cab drivers an extra buck or two.
Walked up to the local bar with my kids to pick up a pizza. When we were leaving, it started to rain…hard. It wasn’t a long walk, but the pizza probably wouldn’t survive. One of the gruff barflies that I’ve seen at the bar before was walking out and asks if we had a ride. She insists on driving us home. When we get to my house, she runs out of gas, so I had the opportunity to immediately repay her. She even offered to pay for the gallon of gas.
We were uptown at a restaurant in New Orleans. The waitress seemed like she was having a bad day. I asked her where I could catch the bus back to the quarter, and she looks at me for a second, then asks if we could wait 30 minutes. I ask why and she says she gets off in 30 and will give us a ride…and she did.
Another time in New Orleans, I was at a street party in the quarter for something or other. I noticed an older homeless guy standing by a bunch of what appeared to be college guys. They were being nice to him, just hanging out, tolerating the old coot. He would walk around and ask people for money once in while. Finally he came up to me. This guy seemed bad off, like he wouldn’t be around much longer. I don’t know if this was the right thing to do*, but I already had a few drinks in me, so I went and bought him a couple slices of pizza and a beer. When I handed it to him, the look on his face was amazing. He couldn’t come up with words to thank me. He takes the food and beer, goes over to the guys that were hanging with him, and tries to offer them some. They politely turned him down, but the idea that he would take what little he had and offer it to someone else always amazed me.
*In retrospect, I realize that buying an alcoholic homeless person beer isn’t exactly what gets you nominated for sainthood, but it was New Orleans.
I remembered another one: Not long after I learned to drive, I went to the grocery store on a dark night. When I came back out, my car wouldn’t start! So I popped the hood to do the only car-related thing I knew how to do: check the oil. I pulled out the dipstick, and suddenly realized that I had parked too far away from the lights and it was much too dark to find the tiny hole to put the dipstick back.
I sat in the car and got ready to cry, when a pickup truck pulled up with two guys and a girl in it. I don’t remember if I asked them for help or they offered it, but one guy went in the store to borrow a flashlight and then the two guys looked my car over for a few minutes to see if they could get it started. I sat in the truck with the girl, who spoke kindly to me (I remember her telling me they were from Interlachen, a town I had visited before).
Finally, one of the guys said, “Is your car in park?” and of course, it wasn’t and I was hideously embarrassed. My car started right up.
So, thank you, Interlachen pickup truck people, for rescuing the moron who stranded herself that night in the Winn Dixie parking lot!
My family and I went to a really nice steakhouse several years ago–I think it was in Chattanooga. There were nine of us: Mom & Dad, me and my husband, three sisters and a brother, and one sister’s date. For convenience, it was one check, but Dad, DH, and sister’s date were each paying for their share. At the end of the meal, DH and DS’s date gave Dad the money for the check, plus their share of the tip. But Dad had planned to pay for it all, and left all the rest of the money (with our knowledge) as a tip. This amounted to about 75-80% tip (possibly more). We left the restaurant, and the waitress chased us down. In tears, she told Dad that her husband had had some serious health problems, resulting in extra bills AND time off from work while she took care of him. The money came to her just when she needed it the most.
I was walking along the bike path on the beach when a jogger came running towards me at a brisk pace. About a foot after she passed me, she dropped her keys. “Hey!” I called out, before I realized she had headphones on and couldn’t hear me. I was not dressed for running. I had a moments hesitation where I thought she’d probably find her keys on her way back, but then I thought maybe she already was on her way back, and it was getting dark, and someone else might take her keys, and meanwhile she’s getting farther away…damn! I picked up her keys and ran after her, and had to tap her on the shoulder on the fly to get her attention.
At least she was very grateful.
My dad and I were driving in a rental car that we’d had for approximately one hour when it got a flat tire on the freeway. We pulled over to the side to deal with it, and before we even got done groaning about having to deal with a flat tire, two young guys hopped out of a car behind us and started fixing it. They had that tire fixed before my dad and I would have even finished scratching our heads over how to tackle it.
Thanks, guys.
This MLK Day, after work I was waiting at the bus stop, and had a grand mal seizure. I apparently fell down into the snow, and a coworker came out and found me, along with a visitor and her kids. Fortunately, said visitor was a registered nurse, and had her kids call 9-11. So she and my coworker, K, held me up while the kids watched for the ambulance.
I woke up as they were wheeling me into the hospital, and I only found out who called the following Friday, when I ran into my coworker on the bus. Unfortunately, the woman didn’t leave her name.
I was discussing this thread with Hallboy last night and we made it into a competition of sorts. Each of us will see who can assist someone in one week. Being polite doesn’t count (saying thank you, holding open the door for someone going into the store, etc.) and it doesn’t count towards each other (if I fix Hallboy something he really likes for dinner, or he brings up my clean clothes from the basement, for example).
Last night, Hallboy managed to rack up TWO small incidents while we were at the store. I’d better get busy! (I’ll do one today–I volunteered to sit in on a meeting for a co-worker for moral support.)
My eldest brother got married in L.A. one summer, so my mom, my little sister (6), another brother(17) and I(16) drove from Washington. Just north of Lodi, we blew a radiator hose (cue CCR). This was in 1980, so cellphones didn’t exist.
No one stopped to help, so we decided that me and my brother would walk south along I-5, since we weren’t sure how far we were from town. We walked for half an hour or so when we were picked up by a trucker with a load of tomatoes. He took us to the next truck stop, where we bought the hose and a water jug. We got a ride back to the car from the mechanic who sold us the hose.
My bro and I installed the hose and filled up the radiator. We then drove another couple of miles and the other hose went kablooie as well.
This time, someone immediately pulled over. It was a young (maybe 21) woman, dressed very nicely. She was on her way to a Billy Graham event in Sacramento, but she took my brother and me in search of a new hose. The mechanic at the truck stop had gone home, so she took us to every closed auto parts store in Lodi (It was Sunday) until we finally found one to sell us the part. She refused all offers of money to thank her, even though we probably made her 3 hours late for Billy.
Mom and my 6-year-old sister sat on the side of I-5 for hours that day. Luckily, we had a full cooler with ice, food and drinks along. No one else stopped. They didn’t even see a CHP car the whole time. We later looked it up, and that had been the hottest day of the year in the Sacramento valley and we were not used to that hellscape. That girl really saved us.
Many years ago when I was 17 I was visiting a woman who had stayed with us about five years earlier as a exchange student for about a month. She had borrowed a car, a VW bug, to come and meet me and pick me up. While we were driving back we got a flat tire on top of a dike (I think it was. In any case it had a very narrow shoulder. We pulled over and found no spare or jack in the trunk.
While wondering what to do, another car pulled over and four Longshoremen (I believe that’s what they were) got out. Their jack would not work on the Bug, so three of them grabbed the back bumper and hoisted it up, while the fourth put their spare on our car, then followed us to a service station.
My father was quite strict. He had a horrible tug-of-war with Middlebro about curfew during the high school years - it wasn’t even rebelliousness or anything like that on Middlebro’s part, just lousy time-sense, but almost every day Middlebro would get home a few minutes over curfew and Dad would get on his high horse and rant at him for five or ten neverending minutes. One thing about Dad’s rants: there was no possibility of defense. If he’d been yelling at you, for example, for soiling your clothes, “but my water had broken!” would have received “that’s no excuse, young lady.”
One night, Middlebro was over fifteen minutes late; Dad was climbing up one wall and down another. Then Muddlebro walks in with this huge grin on his face and, as Dad opens his mouth, raises his hand saying “hear me out and if you still want to yell at me I won’t answer back.”
Turns out that as he and his best friend were heading to BF’s house, they ran into a young couple who asked them for directions to a hotel. Directions in my hometown can be quite tricky, it’s a pretty hilly place so forget about “chessboard layouts.” So the boys offered to accompany them to the nearest one instead (it was about 300 yards away, has a good kitchen, it’s family-owned so if you turn up at “kitchen closed hours” without having had dinner they’ll still feed you some ham or pastries, and it’s cheap) and, if there wasn’t room in that one, to another one. As they were heading there, they’d seen a road sign “cathedral XIII century” and the couple asked about it. “Oh yeah, it isn’t particularly pretty but it’s kind’a interesting that it’s got a part that used to be the sinagogue and one that used to be the mosque, the three buildings were built together and communicated with each other.” The couple asked more questions about the area. They got to the hotel, there were rooms available, two singles or double, “double”, so twin beds or one, “one, we’re in out honeymoon, our car broke down in the highway, well it was just out of gas but it turns out the gauge is broken” oh! I’ll put you in the big room, “oh no, just a regular one,” no way, it’s your honeymoon and we have it available and you’re getting it, have you had dinner, moooooom table for two in the big room, the newlyweds asked about some of the touristy posters in the walls (all of places half an hour away tops) and then they looked at each other with huge grins and said “actually, can you make that room for one week?”
They called the hotel where they’d intended to take their honeymoon before their car left them “stranded in the middle of nowhere” and cancelled.
Dad accepted “taking a stranded couple to Remigio and getting them to change honeymoon plans” as a valid excuse
Receiving: I’ve never really owned my own car, but in the summer of 1995 my parents bought a 1968 Karmann Ghia for me to use. I drove it all summer, until the day I was scheduled to fly back to Massachusetts from Tacoma, to go back to college.
It had been acting up a bit - sluggish on the acceleration, but I figured if I could just get it home I’d be ok. I was driving on the I-5, just south of Spokane St. in Seattle, when I heard an almighty BANG and saw smoke pouring out of the rear (engine) compartment.
I managed to pull it over and get my stuff out of the car, and I sat on the guardrail watching flames start to come out of the engine compartment. I was tiny, female, and bald, and wearing all black. Next thing I know, this VW bus pulls over and a couple gets out. They didn’t have a fire extinguisher, they didn’t have a cell phone (they weren’t all that common), but dammit, they had a VW too and they came over to offer their moral support. We sat on the guard rail until another car pulled over. That driver had a phone, and we called 911, but someone had already reported it to the fire department, and they showed up to douse my car soon after. Thank you, random VW owning hippies!
Giving: A few months ago, my bf and I took his truck to have the oil changed. While we were waiting, we noticed a strange black suitcase/binder in the truck bed. Car robberies are pretty common around here, and we figured someone had stolen it out of a car and then ditched it in the bed of his truck. We tracked down the owner - a local musician/music teacher whose car had gotten broken into during a gig - and returned his case to him. It had all of his teaching stuff in it.
That is a great idea. Have you caught up? I have to say that I think ordinary civility does matter, though. It may not win THE prize, but it sure helps the day to day stuff pass pleasantly.
In May of 96, my dog and I had just moved into our own apartment after nearly nine months of living in the basement of the professor I was working for. The prof’s wife and I had constant battled of how tight my dog’s collar was “supposed” to be; unbeknownst to me, just before I left their house, she’d loosened his collar again as a final passive-aggressive ‘screw you.’ The new apartment was a tiny one-room in the garage of house across the road from the college I was a TA at/would be attending in August, so it was perfect for carless me. As I was walking the pup that night along the fairly-busy road in front of the college, a stray dog ran up to us; my dog was extremely sociable, so went to follow the stray… right out into the road. Wouldn’t have been a problem otherwise, but he slipped out of the too-loose collar and was hit by a passing car (which never stopped). I was instantly in the road with him, and the group of frat/sorority kids who happened to be walking by leapt into action; one called the police and three came out into the road to stop traffic and carry my pup to the sidewalk. When the policeman showed up, he went through dispatch to call my vet to get him to meet me at the clinic (it was after hours) and then my only friend- the prof I was the TA for (different from the guy I worked for). The sorority girls waited with me, consoling me, while my friend drove the 20 minutes from his house, picked us up, waited with me at the clinic, drove me home, and sat with me until I fell asleep. Pup turned out okay, despite neuro damage in his front leg. About two years later a girl came up to me in the cafeteria at school- it was one of the girls from that night, and she wanted to know how everything had turned out. I bought her lunch.
Back in 2003 I was doing crisis assessments for a local hospital. I’d just finished one up, and was on my way home when the car started acting up. I got off the highway, where it died completely. It was 1AM on a weeknight, I was on a dark exit ramp, it was the middle of winter (no snow, but cold) and my cell phone wouldn’t pick up a signal. About ten minutes later a guy pulls up in a truck, and asks if I need help. At his suggestion, I let him push my car with his for about 2 miles to the fire station, which neither of us knew til we arrived was a volunteer station and therefore closed. So he pushed my car for another couple miles to a gas station- also closed but with a pay phone. Funny thing about that was he had cautioned me when he first pulled up about how it was dangerous to accept help from just anyone- he was a bounty hunter and knew what folks were like. I told him I was a therapist, and had a pretty good clue as well. He wouldn’t take anything for his trouble, but I sent him a nice thank-you to the address on his business card (which he gave me to prove he was on the up-and-up). I called the tow truck company that Mr Kitty and I had been using for years; the owner answered the phone, recognized my voice (a bit depressing, that) and came out immediately. On the way back to my house, he mentioned how he doesn’t normally do after-hours calls, preferring to send them to a different company with younger drivers, but there was no way he’d let me wait any longer than I had to for a tow. He got a big tip folded into the check I gave him to pay for the tow, and to this day I send him business any time I can.
Some of you may know about the current difficulties at Chez Kitty; we recently filed bankruptcy, and Mr Kitty is on disability while we wait to get him on the transplant list. A church group came to work today to tour my program and see if it’s a worthwhile financial investment, and the woman in charge of the group brought a card, signed by all the members of the group, and a homemade birthday cake. Apparently she remembered me mentioning that Mr Kitty’s 50th birthday was coming up on Monday, and took it upon herself to make a cake for a person she’d never met, just because his wife heads up a program at a facility she supports (she and I met in December, though she’s been involved with fundraising for us for a long time, and apparently she’s taken a liking to me). I couldn’t thank her enough (she brought me a huge stuffed teddy bear and a horse calendar for Valentine’s day, so I didn’t feel too left out!).
I’m feeling better now that I saw the story in the OP. Thanks, eleanorigby.
Months ago, on my first day on the job as a tutor and student club advisor at my old high school, I happened to be without a car. I waited for an unusually long amount of time at the bus stop by my house. I was tying my shoes when the bus finally came, and the driver didn’t even slow down–but he did honk his horn to show that he knew I was there, IOW, that he was being mean, not just assuming I didn’t need the bus. As he zoomed past, I waved frantically and ran after the bus. There were two other bus stops on the next few blocks, so once he saw that I very much needed to get on the bus, I thought he would stop at one of those. Nope–he just blew on past. I have no idea what the hell his problem was.
A kind old lady apparently saw the whole thing from her car, and she pulled up along the curb to offer me a ride. My work was out of her way, but she was able to drop me off at the trolley station that would take me right there. We had a nice chat along the way, too. Remembering that day still brings a smile to my face. What a nice thing to do for a stranger!
I always try to pay for more time on parking machines than I need. It’s a small thing, but I like to think that, every once in a while, someone shows up at that space after everything starts going wrong in their day, and things start looking up for them once they realize they get free parking for a little while.
Awww! You just have to smile when you read a post like that, don’t you?
Believe me, when I worked for tips (or at least, back when tips determined whether I had to choose between buying food or buying gas), a $100 tip would have absolutely changed my life. When you’re in need, you don’t judge the rich for helping out. Speaking of which, back in those days, I started a woe-is-me thread in MPSIMS, not asking for anything and not expecting anything but a little emotional support, but a kind Doper decided to send me $500 out of the blue to help get me through Christmas. On top of that, she and another Doper paid for my share of dinner and dessert at my first Dopefest. It all really made my year.
Judging from my experience in foodservice, I think it’s safe to assume that everyone working that kind of job at a chain or in a poor neighborhood is in debt in one way or another. I don’t know much about the guy, but apparently he runs some sort of debt management/reversal business, so it’s pretty huge for him to just take care of strangers’ debts for free.
I was unfamiliar with the story before I read the thread, but I’ve always liked to think that, someday, I’ll just randomly leave a $100 tip when I can afford it, somewhere where it will really be appreciated.
My '97 Dodge Dakota that had gotten me across the country from Colorado to Florida in one piece had suddenly and unexpectedly died in the left turn lane during rush hour on a busy street as I was on my way home. Before I could even get out of the truck, 8 random teenage boys start running at me full-speed across the busy highway, waving their arms with a woman trotting across the road behind them.
“The boys were playing football in the front yard and saw your truck break down!” she yelled at me. “They’re gonna push it out of the road for you!”
Before I could even realize what was happening, one jumps into the drivers seat, and seven 17-year old football players are carefully navigating my truck through traffic off to a side road in a neighborhood. The mom is just smiling at me, asking if I have somebody to call, as I am standing on the median in my pharmacy jacket, still dumbfounded at how quickly the whole thing took place.
The boys parked the truck, asked me if I needed to come inside and use the phone, and then trotted back over to finish their game.
I am still amazed at how quickly they figured out something was wrong and ran over to help, it might not have been a big deal but to a (then) 19 year old girl living on her own 2,000 miles from her family, it was important to know that somebody was looking out.
I have tons of other examples, but this one will do for now.
