The nicest thing someone has done for you.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m starting this thread to help restore some faith in humanity. I think sometimes we forget the kindness of others and lose hope in our fellow humans. So what is the nicest thing someone (or a group of people) has done for you.

I’ll start: On October 28th we found out our 6th month old has leukemia (he’s 1 year old next week). In the 5 months that followed several friends, family and strangers provided up with money, food, and help watching our 4 other children. I was totally taken aback by the generosity of others. Without them, we would not have made it this far.

We did not have to buy and Christmas presents for our kids. Each of them (all 5) got at least 20 gifts. Thanksgiving Dinner was provided. I didn’t have to pay for gas for 3 months. This is the kind of generosity I’m talking about.

Now its your turn [I never can remember when to put an apostrophe in its, it’s]

2

I have had several stomach operations. In '05 my stomach just stopped working. I couldn’t even keep myself properly hydrated. I would try to work half a day and then come home and attempt to force myself to drink a quart of gatoraid. I was shedding almost a lb a day.

I am not ever a tidy man, but during this time I was even worse, just trying to keep myself alive was hard enough. My house had fallen into a state that was not really safe for living.

In June my stomach perforated and I was rushed to emergency surgery. I nearly died and was in the hospital for a long time.

My friends at work did not want me to come home to a house in the state mine was. My boss and his wife, his boss and girlfriend all came to my house and cleaned it top to bottom. This was a mammoth chore. I will never forget it.

3

Well, my wife and I are career people, we want a family, but we are waiting for certain ducks to be in a row. I love my wife with all my heart, and we have been through the doldrums of a lot of bad things. When I turned 30, we were having a particularly bad year and I was quite down. She went to the restaurant where we had met some 6 years prior, and had not been to since, and rented the entire upstairs. When she explained to the owners who we were and that we would compensate them nicely they agreed. This is not something they would ever have done it my wife had not been so persuasive. She then invited ALL of our family and friends and she flipped for the entire gig. nearly $5000. It’s a big restaurant.
I thought we were going back there for nostalgia, not a birthday party. When I arrived, went upstairs and people started singing happy birthday and He’s a Jolly good Fellow…I cried and cried and cried. I love her so much. I’m a lucky man.

Plus as a present she bought me the ruk sack I had wanted form L.L. Bean and a beautiful Garmen GPS…

That was a pretty nice thing to do.

4

The first two years I was in High School, Dad was a factory manager. We barely ever saw him; his asshole of a boss would call him at 3am after he’d driven back from a meeting 400km away, to tell him he had another meeting in the same place at 9am; he was smoking 4-5 packs a day. I didn’t know whether I was more afraid of him dying on the highway or of him dying of lung cancer, but I was seeing him dead. When he was home, he was so tense that no noise was allowed. He’d fly off the handle at the smallest provocation.

Mom was busily ignoring all the bad signs. Caritas, PTA, blahblahblah. She still claims those were the best years of Dad’s career. The highest-paid, yes; the best, I disagree.

I got my brothers set for school, took care of our breakfasts, prepared lunch most days, came from school-changed out of my uniform-went to the grocery-did my homework-got bros to do theirs-brought the laundry in from the clothesline-ironed.

Of course, don’t you ever try to complain to anybody: nobody believes that such wonderful parents (“they’re in parenting school!” yeah but he never goes and she goes while I’m the one helping the 8yo with substraction) could be doing anything wrong.

In 11th grade, in October, he got fired. Both went into depression. Take what I’d been done before, add depresed parents, take out cleaning lady. In January, Mom got in bed (she’d been spending more and more time bedridden in winter for the last four years) and didn’t get out for over a year; she had a hospital stay in May and another for surgery in September but other than that, she didn’t leave the house again until 16 months after getting in bed. Dad was preparing state exams; now I was handling my homework, the bro’s and Dad’s. I remember asking him “how do you expect to pass, you never study, you only stare at the same page” after he flunked the first (hey, I don’t claim to be sensitive). He got lucky on the second one (the subject for the essay that was the first cutoff was something he could have written about on his sleep): by August after being fired, he had a new job. Mom was still bedridden at this point.

I still didn’t know how to cook vegetables (still really don’t, actually). Rita, a friend of Mom’s, came by about once a week and brought cooked veggies, pot roasts, things like that (she cooked a big batch, half for her family, half for us); other friends would do the same less frequently. They also cleaned and if they saw that the clothes hamper was full, ran a washer and hung the clothes up to dry. I’m sure they must have done some ironing at times.

That was great.

But the time I gave Rita a hug that made her say “girrrrrl, I’m trying to breathe here!” was a couple of years ago, when Mom said “I don’t know how would we have survived those two years without you” and her reply was “without me? I came once a week! Thank your daughter, she’s the one who cleaned your bedridden butt and fed your men every day!”

Redfrost: if you can separate it (it has, it is): it’s. If you can’t separate it, no apostrophe.

5

And I do know the difference between done and doing. Really. Promise!

6

My husband had been out of work for a year and a half. I was working two jobs trying to make ends meet, and going to school part time. I never saw my kids and was always close to the end of my rope. Christmas was going to be tough. I managed to scrape together enough money to get each of the kids two presents from Santa, and one from Mom and Dad. I wanted to be able to do so much more for them, but just couldn’t. Christmas Eve, we head out to church. We spent an hour or two after church looking at Christmas lights. We get home, the kids leave cookies for Santa, and head up to bed. I am tired, depressed, exhausted really, so I head to bed too. I open my bedroom door and there is a huge box on my bed. The note said, “I heard the kids were extra good this year, here’s something extra. Love, Santa” There were TEN gifts for each of them. I have no idea who left them, but they made it the best Christmas ever.

7

Redfrost: My old English teacher told me, “its” is like “his”; possessive, no apostrophe. I could never remember, but that made good sense to me. Hope it helps!

8

About six years ago now, I had just split up from my ex and taken custody of our son. I was pretty much living paycheck to paycheck in an apartment leased under the assumption that we’d both be there working to pay for it.

One Sunday morning, I was in the car with my son and I stopped at a drug store to check my checking balance on the ATM. It showed that I had about $40 in my account so we went to the grocery store and bought staple products: bread, milk, diapers, eggs, etc. Came up to about $20 or so. I ran my debit card and it was rejected. Tried again. Rejected. I apologised and went to the store ATM – it showed me with a balance of about $5. I don’t know why the discrepancy.

So, I apologised and was embarassed and walked out wondering what we were going to do for the week when I heard a woman calling to me. An older, well dressed woman waved me down and told me to come back inside, that she was paying for my groceries. I went the gamut from trying to demur to thanking her to trying to get her information to pay her back but all she would tell me was that it was okay and that she had been there herself. I got my groceries and that was that.

Even now, typing the story out took me a couple attempts and choked me up. So, for $20, that was the nicest (random) thing anyone has done for me. I felt the need to edit that so not to diminish the many, many things done for me by friends & family.

9

Wow! It’s great to read these stories. Keep ‘em comin’. I know there are other random acts of kindness out there. :slight_smile:

10

When my father died, I had to change a plane ticket to get back home. I was not thinking very clearly and was having a hard time. The Northwest ticket agent at the airport quietly put me in first class for my cross-country flight, which I didn’t know until I got on the plane.

11

A lot of stories about the generositity of others when jobs are lost. I will add mine. I had a business. It did very well - skyrocketed, in fact. Like a rocket without a chute, it came back down - hard - taking me to the brink of bankruptcy. My house was on the edge of being lost. Family (those people who are supposed to be there for you regardless) abandoned me. I remember calling my brother asking if all else failed if I could move my family into his basement. I asked him through tears - no offers came unasked.

Christmas was approaching. It was going to be awful despite having actually bought the presents when there was money. There was no money for a tree & I frankly did not feel very Christmassy. Then my daughter’s friend showed up at the door with a tree. She “just happened” to be shopping for a tree and decided to buy two. This girl was 18 years old! She single-handedly restored Christmas. (Shoot - crying now).

12

Last year, my husband and I had a lot of problems (mostly financial) hit us at once. During that time, my husband’s car basically blew up and then a week later, my alternator went out. We were able to get my car running (somewhat) but when I mentioned it to an internet friend (he lives in NY, I in TN) he mentioned that he had a car I could have. He wasn’t using it and didn’t need it. Of course, I pretty much blew it off as he lives in NY, and there was no way with our financial situation I could go to NY to get a free car. He found a way to get to Indiana for me. The car had some minor issues, but was a relatively new car (2001) and in great shape for the most part. He did it out of kindness, never asking for anything in return. Just a sweet, generous guy.

I have recently been amazed at the plethora of decent people out there. My dad was a Vietnam War vet. He suffered from PTSD and had a lot of issues from being in a war zone. When he retired (when I was very young) people were so hateful to him for having been in that war. I remember how I used to want to kick people when they would start a sentence with, “so, you were in Vietnam.” Recently; however, with my husband in the military we have been out in public with him in uniform. We have had people come up out of the blue to thank him for his service (really nice of them), pay for our dinner and have the waitress tell him “thanks” and even one day had a stranger come up to us while at Wal-Mart and handed the cashier a check. She wanted to pay for our groceries. She had no idea just how much our total would come to, and didn’t care. We thanked her and tried to politely decline, but she insisted. It was very surreal. Makes me have some hope for the future…

13

When my husband lost his job, he already had a vacation to visit his cousin in Texas planned. He took the trip anyway, since the tickets were non-refundable and it wasn’t going to cost him anything else. When he got back on the plane, his cousin shoved an envelope in his hand. He opened it on the plane and it had $1000 in it. We both cried. Then later, when we had a little extra money and he was in a bad way, we mailed him a cashier’s check for $1000. He cried.

14

When I was about seven or so, my family lived in a trailer park in Texas that was next door to a Stop-N-Go/7-11 type dealie. Mom wanted to make macaroni and cheese to go with our meager dinner but we were out of milk, so she scraped together all of the pennies she’d been saving and sent us (my sister and I) next door to get a little carton of milk. We were there, dutifully counting out $1.67 in pennies when an older lady walked up and paid for our milk and some candy bars for us as well.

It wasn’t a huge amount of money but it really stuck with me, and it affected how I feel about helping people in need.

One of the kindest things I’ve ever seen someone do for someone else involves my sister. My sister can be a real bitch, but she, and most of the people in my family, genuinely enjoy helping people. We’re the kind of people that like to give people presents because we like to see their eyes light up (ESPECIALLY if it’s something we know they’ll love - like my husband’s stuffed R2-D2 doll). She had to do something that related to her paper for her senior project, which was about starting a nonprofit youth club in Carson City. She’d have to solicit donations to do it, so she decided to adopt a family for Christmas and get them Christmas all on donations.

We got a local grocery store to donate Christmas dinner, and local stores donated toys and clothing. A bank ran a clothing drive for said family.

Well, we got everything to our house and it just pretty much rocked. But my sister decided that dammit, it just wasn’t enough, and went out and spent half her check on more toys for the kids (she paid her bills, though, she was being nice, not stupid).

This is also the sister who paid for Thanksgiving dinner for a friend of mine’s family when they got screwed over on money one year. Didn’t even bat an eye.

My little sister is my hero.

~Tasha

15

When I first came to Spokane (WA), Mom had just been downsized back in Salt Lake City (Utah); staying there wasn’t an option as there were no jobs available (that she could work, at the time) and her savings had flatlined. We came up here with another family, a single guy and his three daughters, who chipped in on the U-Haul and helped us make a caravan – neither family could afford to move alone. He had some contacts up here who had promised Mom some work; he had a solid offer letter in hand for a job here as well. It seemed like a good plan.

Then he and his three daughters, one of whom I’d quite grown fond of (in a puppy-love sort of way, I was barely 13 and she was one year older), vanished. Without a trace. Everything in the U-Haul went with them. We later tracked it to Ohio, where it had been turned in at a local U-Haul dealer, completely empty – all our belongings (except what had been in our car) were missing. His last name wasn’t his real last name; the offer letter, forged. Contacts? Some buddies of his sweet-talking Mom on the phone, we assume; the address she’d been told to report to didn’t exist, and would have been the alleyway between a bait store and a low-cost motel if it had.

In the middle of December, eight days before Christmas to be exact, Mom and I sat in a Perkins (like a Denny’s, but local to the western states, I think), trying to figure out how to stay warm for the night. I was a good Boy Scout; my solution was to find a park, pitch a tent, drag out the sleeping bags and maybe roast some marshmallows. Mom nodded thoughtfully, told me it was a good idea, then suggested that maybe we would stay in the car instead, since it was snowing outside.

We’d been there for a few hours (looking back, I realize that Mom was stretching it as long as she could so we didn’t have to brave the cold any sooner than we had to), and the staff was strongly hinting it was maybe time for us to leave. Mom had gone through several pots of coffee and I’d eaten my fries a long time ago, but it was all we could afford. As we’re gathering our coats, a stranger comes up to us – she was about my mom’s age, but obviously from a higher social circle than we were.

And she told us that she and her husband couldn’t help but overhear our conversation, and that if we wanted, we could come stay with her and her family until Mom found a job.

It took a bit of convincing, but we did. They set us up in a spare room, we had unlimited run of the house, we were welcome at all the meals and could raid the fridge whenever we wanted. The next day the husband took Mom with him to work and by the end of the day she had a job – it was temp work, but it was a job. By the end of the following day, he’d tapped some of his contacts and we had a low-cost apartment set up; all that was needed was a deposit, which Mom would have on her first check, which would come the day before Christmas Eve.

The next day, the wife took ME shopping with her – she wanted help carrying packages, she said, and I was about the same size as her nephew and she might need me as a reference. I followed her through the stores, carrying all manner of things as she finished her Christmas shopping.

Christmas Eve: they take us up to the apartment with what remained of our stuff. Inside, a Christmas tree was brightly lit, piled underneath with presents – many of which were ones that I’d helped the wife pick out for her ‘nephew’; there was food in the fridge, the place was warm and clean, and a gift certificate lay on the table to the department store the husband managed – a fairly upscale example of the breed.

I’ve got tears dripping as I type this. I won’t name names on an internet messageboard, but if the people who helped us out when we needed it most ever read this, you’ll know who you are. And thank you.

I’m a cynical sort, but even after so many years have passed since that Christmas, I stop and remind myself that there ARE people out there like that. That not everyone I meet is solely interested in their own well-being.

The family moved away about six months later – the husband had been transferred to oversee the region, instead of just that one store, from what I understand – and we drifted quickly out of touch. Well before we could have made any sort of repayment. I’ve always been ashamed of that.

16

Very touching story. I would not feel ashamed of not repaying, Sofaspud. That concept of “Pay it forward” is the way to handle it.

17

Sofaspud, wow… You have the makings of Christmas story there. And I don’t mean that to diminish the experience. I am truly left awed. Thank for you sharing that.

18

A couple of these stories brought tears to my eyes. It’s good to read this thread when you’re severely PMSing and hating people.
I’ve had too many kindnesses doled out to me to count. My ass has been miraculously saved so many times in pinches that I don’t even stress out anymore when I hit a rough patch. I just know that help will come, and it always does.

-Single mom for 10 years, but a decent-paying job for only the last couple.

19

People have lots of extrainary things for me and my family but one simple thing stands out.

In 9th grade, my parents had just gotten divorced and all hell had broken at home. I was in a special program at school when this area-wide group of other students and I got invited to a trip at the space center in Huntsville, AL. It was a 4 day trip but two of the days were making the 14 hour one-way drive on a charter bus. My mother was oblivious to everything at the time and I only got $20 for the trip to spend.

We left on the trip. I was the only one from my school and I didn’t know anyone else. For some reason, the charter bus driver was really nice to me and always gave me special attention when we stopped and things. By the end of day two, I was having a good time but I had no money just from buying incidental things and I was pretty upset about it but I kept it to myself. A few hours later, there was an anonymous envelope on my seat it the bus. I opened it and there was $30 inside which seemed like an infinite amount given the circumstances. I never figured out who gave it to me. I always guessed it was the bus driver who probably didn’t have all that much himself but I will never know.

20

The person at work who drew my name this past year for Christmas went to every employee and asked them to write down whatever they like about me on a little slip of paper. She also had my husband and children do the same thing. She collected all of the little slips of paper and put them in a decorative blue box with my picture on the front of it. I was feeling sad this past Christmas and those little slips of paper helped me see that I was/am making a positive difference in my small world. Never, ever underestimate the difference even small acts can make to another human being!

Sofaspud - my husband and I have helped folks (on an admittedly smaller scale than your family received), and I can honestly tell you that we would never, ever want anyone we’ve helped to feel ashamed about not paying us back. We fully hope that our good deeds will be paid forward instead. We’ve been blessed, and in turn we bless others … and so on, and so on, and so on…