“Kindness Can Be Catching”

 

            I was pushing my shopping cart along, lost in thought, when I felt a touch on my arm.  I turned to see a woman whose name I couldn’t remember, something that’s not so unusual for me....  I’m lucky I can remember my children’s names...  And my husband’s.  I found myself looking at her blankly.  Her name, what’s her name? I said to myself frantically. Sally? Kathy? Sandy? Sarah? Mandy?  I think it starts with an S .... or does it end with a Y... or ...?

            She smiled, the sort of a smile that lit up her eyes and beamed from her whole face.  I couldn’t help smiling back.  We chatted for a moment, then resumed our shopping.  A glow grew in my heart and my step was lighter–just because she recognized me enough to get my attention and smile.  She didn’t call me by name, so she may not have remembered mine, either.  She could have gone on by, just like I do so often when I see somebody whose name I can’t quite remember.

            What mattered was her stopping me, smiling, and, in a moment, boosting my day!

            Not too long ago, I wrote about “random (and not so random!) acts of kindness” and asked you to tell me about your experiences.  Your response has made  this a most delightful column for me to write.

            The following are just a few of the things you shared.  A couple who moved to Cedar City a few months ago said that a pitcher-full of roses was left on their front door step.  “But who could have left them?  We don’t know our neighbors very well.  There were 18 roses, not a dozen, but 18!  Can you imagine?  And gorgeous, oh, they just took my breath away–just like red velvet.”

            We talked about how much fun it was not to know exactly who gave them.  “It makes you feel warm about everybody, doesn’t it?” said her husband. 

            A reader wrote to say that somebody in the car in front of her paid her entrance fee into Zions one day. 

            Another wrote to say that she saw somebody hand several hundred dollar bills to the check out clerk and tell her to pay for the groceries of the woman behind him and to give her any change.  The woman had two little children with her, was largely pregnant and the cart was full.  The reader was in the parallel check out line and witnessed the woman’s dumfounded, look when the clerk told her she didn’t owe anything and handed her some cash.

            How much fun that man must have had to imagine what my reader saw!

            One of the “mom” discussion boards I belong to asked, “If you found $20, what would you do with it?”