Last week I ordered a copy of one of the Eyewitness Travel Guide series. This one was for Ireland. These guides are very reliable with extensive information, glossy pages, maps, and approximately 700 color photographs. I usually pay around $17.50 in U.S. dollars.
At Amazon I noticed there was a used copy for sale in “very good” condition for $1.00. The copy had belonged to the seller personally and was unmarked and the seller had a high rating. So I bought it. I paid a total of $4.49 through Paypal.
About three days later, a package arrived. Inside were two smaller packages wrapped in shiney silver paper and tied with green ribbons. One was the book in absolutely immaculate condition. The other was a CD called Celtic Graces – The Best of Irish Folk Music.
What an outrageously wonderful thing to do! Just this simple act of giving to a complete stranger touched me profoundly. There are people out there who still take pleasure in just creating moments of joy for other people.
I must add that our own Monstro has also done that for me in the neatest and most creative way!
I’m going to make it a point in the next couple of weeks to pass on this particular act of kindness. And in general, I want to practice these mysterious surprises on others.
I couldn’t bear to post this in “mundane, pointless stuff” because it was too meaningful to me. So I guess I’d better get your opinions! What are some of the kindest things that others have done for you – especially strangers? Things that served as reminders that goodness endures?
Let this go wherever you want to take it. Did you do something to surprise someone else? How did it go? What was your best surprise?
I once won a small collection of stamps on eBay. Not big by any means, and I didn’t pay a lot for it, but I was astonished when the goods arrived, to see there was an extra packet in there. It was a number of quite rare mint condition stamps, with a note saying “thank you for bidding on my stamps” (can’t remember exact words).
WOW!
Very small thing, but I know what you mean - it renews your faith.
Does anonymously sending the Firefly DVD set to a geeky relative count? (By chance, I found out she’d never seen it, and she’s a Buffy fan. I couldn’t resist)
I couldn’t begin to tell you all the ways Gr8Kat’s helped me. Aside from my aunt, she’s probably the most genuinely nice and caring person I’ve met.
I’ve also had the great pleasure of being friends with various other Dopers that’ve done things for me. Most especially vivalostwages, who’s been sending me small presents and free weekly recordings for about a year and a half now with only my thanks as her payment.
I feel bad for not mentioning others but those’re the two that’ve done the most for me and listing everyone else (just at the SDMB alone) would take forever and I’d invariably miss someone.
(Okay, except Silver Fire. Have to mention her since I give her so much grief for being such a great friend. :))
When the wife and I moved back to Miami in 1997, we rented an apt downtown. As soon as we settled in, I was deployed underway for 5 weeks around Puerto Rico. About 3 weeks into it, my wifes car was stolen from the garage one morning. The thief made quite a racket as he nearly ran down a security guard and crashed through the gate as he sped off.
Later that day, a total stranger approached my wife in the lobby (who she said could have been Scottie Pippen, both in looks and size) and told her that he saw who did it - knew who it was, and would get the car back. He explained that he knew she was new to the building, and would help out. Understandably, she was a bit cautious of what could be some type of set-up, but as nothing was asked for this favor, she simply said “OK”.
Sure enough, this good sam found the kid in a neighborhood about a mile away, and told him that the car belonged to his aunt, and he’d better give it up or he’d kill him. The kid wisely gave up the “cooling off” location of the car. The good neighbor told my wife where it was, she told the cops - and sure enough, there it was. She got the car back and repaired all before I got back to Miami.
Oddly enough, we never saw “Mr. Pippen” again in the 2 years we were there. I never got to meet him, never got to say thanks, or offer up any type of reward or return favor. I certainly hope good things have come his way.
pullin, the Firefly DVD absolutely does count – especially if it’s to a geeky relative!
Calabi Yau, it’s the surprise factor and the generosity that just blows me away. It’s like being a kid again! One of the sellers on eBay that I have done a lot of business with sent me a beautiful torquoise butterfly with an order or beads once. She didn’t know it, but butterflies have a very spiritual meaning for me. I’ve noticed several eBay sellers that go to the trouble of making their packages and presentations look really nice.
** Aesiron**, isn’t it interesting how certain posters gravitate toward each other for no apparent reason. There is just something that clicks and you trust this person – or you rest against that person’s shoulder or you want to have a cup of coffee at the corner drugstore. And you can be true friends without ever having been blessed by each others’ faces. What I want to know is, how did you manage to meet so many! Seriously, that really is cool.
Scruloose, it is a miracle that your wife got that car back! “Mr. Pippen” might have been putting himself at risk to tell her the location of the car.
And thank you for your kind words, Mr. Starving Artist Did you not get an email from me or are you just playing hard to get, fella?
There’s been many times in my life when complete strangers did nice, little things for me. A couple of times I’d been standing in line to buy a Coke and the person in front of me bought it for me. Oxymoron’s boyfriend insisted on paying for my meal at Dopedinner in NYC.
When I was returning to Kingston, NY from Montreal, I messed up and didn’t switch buses when I needed to. I ended up on a bus that was heading for NYC! I talked to the bus driver and he went out of his way to drop me off at the Kingston station.
Just a few days ago my SO and I got a ride from a total stranger in a small town; his car had broken down there (thankfully, after the job interview where he’d gotten the job on the spot) and was finally fixed so we’d headed up via bus to retrieve it. Of course, when we get there, the tiny bus station is closed. There are a couple of nearby stores that are open, so we head to the closest one, a Goodwill. It turns out that there are no taxis in town. I’m still surprised about that, seeing as it’s a college town and I’d think a small taxi service might be useful.
So one of the people working there offers to give us a ride to our hotel. A customer says he normally would, but the seat in his truck is broken or something. Sometimes I love small towns.
That ten-minute drive meant an awful lot to me. If I get the chance, I’ll do the same thing for somebody.
No, I never got it. (That’s why I asked what you’d heard lately.)
A certain someone said you were wondering so I wrote to tell you it never arrived, and then I wrote a second time giving you an alternate email in case there was still trouble. Apparently you haven’t received those either.
I have this trouble with Yahoo from time to time. Try me at the same user name @hotmail.com
I walk every day. In the past year, I’ve had two total strangers stop me on the street and tell me that seeing my thin self walk so much has inspired them to walk every day too. You never know when you’re being a role model and helping someone improve their life.
Around Midnight, cold wintry midnight, driving back to NYC from Albany, I stopped on the Palisades for the bathroom and when I got back into my car, it completely died. I arranged for a tow truck, but had no way to get home until a stranger seeing the tow truck drive off, said, “Where you going?” I told him Manhattan. He said, “Hop in,” and I did. He asked, “Where can I drop you?” and I said “Any subway stop,” he said, “Which stop do you get off at?”, and that’s where dropped me off, three blocks from home.
My car broke down on me Monday night - it died on my way home from a meeting and would not start again no matter how often or vigorously I threatened it. Since I have no cell phone, and all the nearby houses belonged to summer people, I grabbed my things, turned the emergency flashers on, and started walking. I wasn’t really far from the local nursing home, so I figured I’d head for that and see if I couldn’t call a tow from there.
Now a short walk in warm weather is not the same as a short walk in the winter in the middle of the night. My eyes started watering, and the tears froze on my face - it was that kind of cold. A couple of cars passed me, and I tried to flag them down, but no one was pulling over. After ten minutes of walking like this, the sight of the nursing home coming into view was like seeing an oasis in the middle of the desert. I hurried across the street and through the parking lot, and strode confidently to the sliding doors. They didn’t slide. Seeing a nurse inside, I knocked. She didn’t hear me. Finally, I gave off and slunk off into the night, trying to console myself with the fact that I only another fifteen minutes from my house. It didn’t help much.
Rather than going back out to the street, I decided to brave the snow and pass behind the local ice-skating rink. As I got closer, I heard music. When I got there, I realized that there were people inside - two of the employees had stayed behind to refresh the ice for the next day. I knocked, and they answered. It took me a couple of tries to tell them what had happened (not so much because I was upset, but because I was cold, and my face was frozen), but when things were explained to them, they let me use the phone to call AAA. Then one of them gave me a ride home, so I didn’t have to go for another wintry hike. They were really sweet about the whole situation, too. Nice guys.
Back in October, 1976, while hitch-hiking East from Vancouver, my friend Pete and I had got stuck in a place called Salmon Arm, BC. We’d been there all day and nobody would stop. It began to get dark, and then it started to rain. Just then, a car stopped, and the driver asked us to get in. He said he was a local, and that we weren’t going to get a ride tonight. He told us he’d passed by in the car with his wife a few times, but she didn’t want to pick anybody up. But he offered to take us home. He and his wife fed us, let us take turns having a nice, long shower, and then there was beer and playing guitars while his wife did our laundry. We slept on his furniture, and the next morning, his wife made us a huge breakfast, and then the man drove us about 20 miles out on the Trans-Canada Highway. Before we got out of the car, he insisted that we each take $20.
These were some seriously nice people, and I’ll never forget them.
Oh! Thought of another good story. It was April 2004, and my team had just arrived in Hartford, CT. We decided to go exploring the city that evening and strolled through the park and ended up on the bar side of town. Chris dug around in his pockets and found $10 and declared he wanted to treat us all to ice-cream. But no bar would let us in or serve us anything because all of us except Marcos were underage.
Finally we wandered into a rather hoity-toity looking restaurant called Hot Tomatoes. We looked terribly out of place, a pack of scruffy teenagers who obviously had no idea where we were. Chris explained to the waitress that we were Americorps and had just arrived in town, and had been looking for someplace that would serve us ice-cream for the past 45 minutes. “All I want is however much ice-cream $10 will buy us,” he said.
The waitress seated us and brought us menus. We barely contained our shock. Nothing on that menu, even coffee, was under $10! The waitress said, “Don’t worry about it, just pick out a desert apiece.” She brought us all coffee and then our deserts. It was some of the most delicious stuff I’ve ever eaten. The owner of Hot Tomatoes came out to meet us, and we told him all about how we were in town working with Habitat for Humanity. The waitress showed us pictures of her grandbabies.
The meal they gave us was probably worth $80, considering they served six of us! And they didn’t ask for a penny, though Chris left the 10 dollars as a tip. It was truly fabulous, one of the best dinners of my life. If you’re ever in Hartford, CT and you crave some good desert, pop by Hot Tomatoes. I recommend the Chocolate Decadence.
My sister and I caught something and got sick as two little dogs while travelling with our dad on summer vacation. It hit suddenly, while we were miles away from anything. Dad finally pulled into a tiny, rundown gas station and asked where the nearest doctor was. The closest help was over 100 miles away in Cody. Dad set out, worried spitless and us kids getting worse by the mile.
About 20 miles on a state highway cruiser pulled along side us. The gas station owner has called about us being in trouble and the state trooper led us all the way into Cody, directly to the hospital emergency room. I have no idea how it was coordinated, but after they got us a little better–shot full of meds and rehydrated–we were referred to wonderful little mom 'n pop motel. (We were on a strict budget and sure couldn’t camp in the meantime.) It was inexpensive, clean as a pin and the family who ran it even made special trays of chicken soup, sprite, etc. from their diner for us. Basically they took in strangers in need and treated them like family. We bounced back within a couple of days, as kids do, and went on our way but we sent them Christmas cards and letters for years after.
Just a whole bunch of strangers who went out of their to be decent.
One summer evening in high school, I was riding a bike home from my friend’s house. I was riding really fast, as it was about 11 pm and past my curfew. I won’t go into the details here, but I crashed. I went over the handlebars, banged my head, and broke some bones in my foot and my nose. I was tangled up in the bike and dazed, lying in the street. While I lay there, one car drove up, swerved around me, and drove away, leaving me lying in the road. Slowly, I untangled myself and dragged myself over to the curb, where I sat trying to gather my wits.
Along came a group of about 6 tough-looking teenage boys. Now this wasn’t the safest neighborhood and it was pretty deserted, and I was dazed and in torn teenage-girl skimpy clothing, and the group of boys late at night made me pretty nervous. So when they asked if I was ok, I just brushed them off, assuring them that I was fine. They started to walk away, then they looked back and said, “No, you’re not fine. Where do you live?” Two of them basically carried me the three blocks to my house. Two of them picked up the bike and carried it the same distance (it wasn’t rollable). They knocked on my door and waited until they were sure that my parents understood what happened, then they disappeared before I could even say thank you. I never saw them again, AFAIK.
Not as dramatic a story, but I used to live “past the tolls”. Every now and then, someone in front of me would give the tollbooth operator enough money to pay the toll of the car behind him, and I’d get waved through. That always made my day, so I decided to do it too at random times. I also brought the tollbooth operator some roses one day when my rosebush was blooming like crazy.
When I was about 14, riding my bike by a high rise construction site, a piece of debris metal (the kind that is use to wrap around and secure other things) wound its way around my back tire, jamming up the whole thing.
It was hot. July. Too far from home to carry/drag my precious Sears Free Spirit 3 speed ( brown and orange…wooo!) so I sat on the ground and proceed to try to unknot the metal. Only it was sharp and tough. I never thought to ask for help from any of the construction workers that were milling about, mostly overhead.
Then there was an eclipse of the sun. A guy came along with some tin snips and said, " Here let me help you."
In a jiffy, I was back in action. I thanked him and he told me to try to help out someone else in the future as payment to him.
Actually, now that I think about it, with that same bike, years later, and another bike conundrum, some construction worker gave me a replacement nut and bolt for my Oh So Kewl Old Lady Bike Baskets on the back of my bike. When I thanked him, he said the same thing.
Huh.
It’s like Deja Vu all over again.
Which has led for my lifelong affection for construction workers.
I love threads like these. They make me all misty.
