A couple of weeks ago my granddaughter accidentally left her purse (containing her cell phone and wallet) in a taxi. Not only did the driver deliver her purse to her house and leave her belongings on the front porch, but inside her purse he’d left her a note. The note said, “I lost my wallet one time and when I got it back it was empty. I didn’t want that to happen to you,” – folded inside the note was a hundred dollar bill!
Wanting to do something nice in return, my granddaughter tracked down the taxi driver but all he wanted was for her to pass on a kindness to someone else.
Her experience reminded me of an incident that took place several years ago when my older sister (not older than the hills – just older than me), a family friend, my mom (who’d be the first to say she is older than the hills – age 92 to be exact) went out to lunch. The car we were in was low to the ground and my sister and I were having a heck of a time getting mom out. As we tugged and pushed on her we started to laugh and the laughing only got worse when my mother starting scolding, “Don’t you girls get me started laughing!” We finally extricated the poor woman (without the use of the Jaws of Life) and went in to lunch.
During the meal I noticed that a man at a table across from us kept glancing in our direction (not that I blamed him – we were still chuckling over mom being stuck in the back of the car). The man was well dressed: black slacks and black silk shirt. But the reason I noticed him was because before he sat down I saw that he had something similar to the receiver of an old fashioned phone hanging from his belt by a long black cord, and I wondered what that was all about. Was he in the restaurant on his lunch break? If so what kind of job required that he carry half a phone dangling from his person?
The man left as we were finishing our meal and when the waitress came to see if we wanted dessert, my sister asked for the check.
“Your check has been taken care of,” the waitress said. Pointing at the table that the man had recently vacated, she added, “The man that was sitting at that table paid for your lunches and said to tell you to have a nice day.”
The four of us were stunned into silence (finally).
“Who is he?” one of us asked.
“I don’t know,” the waitress answered, “he comes in every once in a while,
chooses someone and pays for their meal. And he leaves before anyone can thank him.”
That guy made our day! And not because we got a free meal, but because it’s so
great to be reminded that there are some really nice people sharing our space on the planet.
2 comments:
I love these stories, and yes, let it be a reminder to all of us to do those things once in a while, whether it involves money or just a human kindness. I saw something on the news last night about a man who had, several years ago, successfully thwarted a robber in his little store. Confronted, the robber dropped to his knees and told him his family was hungry. The shop owner gave him a loaf of bread and $40. This week, the shop owner received a long, heartfelt letter in the mail, along with a $50 bill. The would be robber thanked the shop owner for turning his life around and wanted to repay his kindness. Now THAT's the kind of news I want to hear on TV at night!!!!
Me Too! There are a lot of really good people out there and lots that are at least doing the best they can - it's just not always easy to remember that with all the bad stuff we hear.
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