Random Acts of Awesome

[nerfherder]

Hound Dog stated in an earlier post today about the perceived rarity of people doing right by others these days.

So, I thought I'd start a thread on it. Have you a story akin to the Glass Repair Guy's actions? It could be Customer Service, it could be a neighbor being grand without cause or expectations, it could be a random act kind of thing. I'll post one in a bit, right now I have to run back to the front yard and Pound Dirt.

 

[jal]

I had one that I posted about on here, maybe a year ago or so. Ran out on my lunch break to grab some McD's (ugh, I know, but busy and harried as is life). When I got to the window to pay I was given a slip of paper that said something along the lines of "the spinkle fairy wants you to have a great day". The woman ahead of me paid for my cheese burger and drink. So kind. I was really touched by this. I live in a very small town and she was from the next town over. Not long before that the local paper ran an article about her and how she dresses up as a fairy and spreads "joy" around our local towns, I had read the article and was aware of her, but never thought it would happen to me. Nothing like that ever has. (She is a mom of two, teaching her young children acts of kindness & doing it because she wants to). It really was very cute and I was so touched, I posted a thank you to her on her website and she responded that she was glad she could make my day.

 

[slsh]

Actually, I have a couple, besides Glass Guy (who I have added a rave review for his business on google and will mention to mechanic who referred us how phenomenal he was, as well as anyone I know (you guys???) who may need windshield repair).

First one is recent. We know neighbor well enough to say "hi" for years. Neighbor has a friend who apparently hit some tough times and moved in with him. This entire winter, neighbor (who has severe back issues) and his friend have shoveled not only our driveway, but our front walk and our front porch, including wheelchair ramp. Plus they've swept snow off my van. We're talking this is done by 6:30 a.m, every time it even thinks of snowing this year. When we had the one major snow storm, they were shoveling our drive every couple of hours. It was especially appreciated when husband admitted that one of his triggers for panic attacks is shoveling snow, because he thinks he is going to have a heart attack. I just think that is so tremendously kind and thoughtful, and completely unexpected.

The other one happened several years ago and made me feel kind of ... I don't know, kind of uncomfortable really. I was in the grocery store, and I think I had all 4 kids, so it would have been circa 2000 or before, kids probably 11, 9, 6, and 2, at most. I don't recall that thank you was being particularly gfgish (had actually trained him to be quiet in grocery stores at an early age by telling him to be quiet because the tomatoes were sleeping - LOL, oh my gosh, I had forgotten that - husband came home one day *really* concerned because thank you was whispering through the produce department - I had to explain that tomatoes sleep in grocery stores ). Anyway, I think it was a pretty routine outing - Diva in grocery cart, thank you being quiet, and Wee sitting on Boo's lap in wheelchair. I had a system. So I'm loading kids into van - at that point didn't have lift so Boo was still sitting in car seat and then I'd hoist his wheelchair into back of van - and this elderly gentleman came up to me and handed me $20 and told me to take the kids out to dinner at Mcdonald's, on him. I tried really hard to refuse, but he just said something like he knew how hard it must be and I was a good mom (or something like that) and he just really wanted to make my day a bit easier so he insisted I take the money. I'd recognize him in a heartbeat, and I often wonder if he really *did* know what my life was like... but I keep him in my thoughts to this day.

This is a good thread, not only for kindnesses received, but it makes me think that it's time to pay it forward a bit. Thanks, nerfherder.

 

[Hound dog]

Well........believe it or not, I actually have a random act of awesome to share..........although it's sort of an odd circumstance.

You all know how Molly, Rowdy, and Betsy all crossed the Rainbow Bridge in less than 2 weeks time. Being winter and the ground frozen solid, burial couldn't be considered. Plus they were each rather large dogs.......... Cremation is not cheap for a dog, by the way. It's 100.00 here. That was 300.00 in less than 2 weeks. We only have one person who does cremation who also does animals. It happens to be the same place that handled husband's cremation ect. This is a private family owned funeral home with an excellent reputation. Among the county's poor they have an even better reputation as they will work with anyone and literally bend over backward to give a nice funeral and keep it within a family's budget. They were very kind to me with Fred, very helpful.

Soooooo, this is where my fur babies went. I knew they were in good kind hearted hands. We went to pick them up and Travis still needed to pay for Rowdy, the girls had been paid for upfront at the vets but Rowdy had passed away at home. When he tried to pay for Rowdy the funeral director told him not to worry about it and that he was so sorry we had lost our furbabies like that, that it must've been so hard on us. Travis was so stunned when he told me. Since our budget couldn't possibly get tighter these days, that sure meant a lot to us. Then a few week later Nichole wanted to see the boxes....the cremains were in. Now when I picked up Fred's cremains it was a simple wooden box. All 3 dogs have the most beautifully carved / polished boxes for their cremains with lovely certificates. They are so lovely that I'm actually getting flack from Nichole about putting them into the ground. (omg lol ) That was totally unexpected. Sweet though. I must say.

 

[Dixies_fire]

A few years ago before the army i was a manager at whataburger well we used to get a paper check and I always got mine in the middle of the night when I closed the store. Walmart was right behind our store so instead of getting up early to cash the check or worrying about banking hours I would cash it at Walmart in the middle of the night pick up a few things go home and do my banking later. Long story short I had cash on my and was walking in the bank to deposit my house payment and the money disappeared I don't know to this day if it fell out of my pocket hand or what. I was having a nervous break down about it in front of the bank because my house payment was supposed to get deposited into my dad's account if it wasn't paid I would have to deal with weeks of being screamed at until I had the money to pay that month and next month off. My dad was a strange guy he used my house payment as a way to berate the **** out of me because he paid for my house in full and I paid him, every cent. He was the type that would start calling before pay day to remind me of it and it was never late ever. Well a man came up to me and handed me 200 dollars out of his very large wallet that had several thousand dollars in it. I stuttered thank you as he walked off tears still streaming down my face. Was the nicest thing that has ever happened to me. I paid my house payment. And went without everything else till i got paid again and counted myself the luckiest girl in the world to be able to do so.

 

[nerfherder]

Doggone it, up too late. I'll tell you guys about the Turkey and the Peacock in the morning sometime.

 

[HaoZi]

Yesterday or the day before where I work a customer paid for the person behind her at the drive-thru (no one she knew). It happens sometimes, this is just the most recent.

 

[Calamity Jane]

This is like "Touched by an Angel", and every word is true.
When we first adopted easy child, we had a tiny Toyota Corolla which already had about 75,000 miles on it. We lived in NY, in a not great neighborhood, and potholes reigned on all the streets. The wheels were small, and the potholes were big.
One late Sunday evening, we were coming home from sister-in-law's house in NJ, with tiny easy child in the carseat. The traffic on the parkway about 3 exits from our house was backed up, and husband decided to get off the parkway and take the streets home. Only problem is, it was a very bad neighborhood, but husband just impulsively got off the exit, as we already were in the car for about an hour and a half. We both knew the area like the back of our hands, because it is a well known shortcut, but there are a lot of warehouses, and sketchy buildings, and it's better to navigate in daytime if you use it as a shortcut.
Anyway, we're on a scary abandoned warehouse desolated street that we have to pass to get to the main road that will take us home. husband hit a monster pothole, more like a crater that nearly swallowed the front right part of the car, and we got a blowout, which meant we were going to have to fix the tire right there. Did I mention it was raining? So he gets out of the car and I went into the tiny backseat to keep easy child company in her carseat. I'm thinking this is not good - he's strong, but he's not Hercules, and we are in a freaking BAD neighborhood, and our baby is in the car with us! husband is about to get moving on the tire when 3 or 4 young guys appear out of nowhere and say, "You have to get out of here...don't you know it's not safe?" husband tells them he's got a blowout, he may have ruined the rim, and that he has to change the tire, his wife and baby are in the car waiting. There were no cellphones to call AAA in those days, and no payphones to be found. I'm street smart enough to know those guys could've robbed us, killed us, God knows what. Instead, they scrambled to help and they got the donut tire on there in no time. The car was wet and filthy and they were just helping husband to get out of there as quickly as possible. We were incredibly grateful. husband wanted to pay them for their trouble, but they refused; he asked where they came from, because it was a commercial area, and it was desolated, we didn't see them when we pulled over, but they just "appeared" - it was like a guardian angel moment. We were off in seconds flat, and we never drove thru there again if we hit traffic! God bless those guys whoever they were!

 

[nerfherder]

OK, so the first Thanksgiving holiday we lived here, we were so close to broke we might as well have been. The littlest had just been born not many weeks before (at home!), Kiddo's SSI hadn't come through yet, no other real source of income besides my child support and Blacksmith's custom knife work.

(Somehow we never missed a utility or mortgage payment, but we were also hitting the food banks to make it between spurts of money and were out of propane for a day and a half before we had the money to refill the tank.)

We were waiting for a really cheap sale turkey, and were talking about having T'giving a day or so late, just to catch the turkeys on clearance. Then a friend of mine called, she knew things were tight, she told me she'd just cleaned out her chest freezer and had one turkey too many for the space, could I use one?

Well, heck yes! We grownups could cope, but the kids would have been really sad to be turkey-less.

That was one of the biggest. I may not be making it sound like a big deal, but frankly it was amazing.

And yet, the Universe still would have provided.

One of our neighbors up the road, he's got peafowl, lord knows why. I sure don't. They're pretty, and stupid, and loud, messy eating machines that were a challenge for my garden greens. Because you see, they get loose pretty frequently and only go home when the pickings are slim. He even had to build a giant pen - for his garden! To keep the darned things out. 'least, I *think* they're his. Either his or the other neighbor around the corner.

Well, one day the little flock of braying dummies got into the dog yard. Most made it on to the roof of our house, but one ended up with a broken leg and skittered under the house. The Eldest Little Viking and I had to go crawling under the house with work gloves, corner it, catch it, then I had to bring it out still alive so I could get it in position to break its neck. They are looong bodies and I was afraid the thrashing would bust a pipe. (Yes, our plumbing is Epically Bad.)

Then he and I, we plucked and gutted it, it was a youngish one, no tail feathers yet. I prepped it for the freezer, and a week later we had both turkey *and* peacock for Thanksgiving.

Peacock tastes like big quail. And no, we'll never forget that.

 

[DazedandConfused]

I love threads like this, but struggled to find something to contribute until I read your post, nerfherder. I've shared a few times before, but so that someone reading this will understand, I had a alcoholic, compulsive gambler, and sociopath for a father. He could be cruel and vicious, and mostly he was while alive. However, every great once in a while, something must have snapped in his otherwise malformed brain to do something out-of-the-blue amazingly wonderful.

As a toddler, Daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia. Due to the length, and intensity, of the treatment, I had to quit my job to care for her. husband had just started a new job and although it came with a steady salary, it was lower than average than what we were used to. Eventually, we had to sell our beautiful home and pare ourselves down to one car (we had three). We moved into a mobile home on a farm that husband's employer owned.

We scrapped by as best we could over the next year. Daughter was 3 and I discovered I was pregnant with Son. Christmas was coming and needless to say, we didn't have money for presents, but managed to scrounge enough to purchase a tree. It was really quite beautiful and I had a some decorations I had collected over the years, but I wanted something really special for Daughter's Xmas that she might actually remember. Then, I recalled that I bought a bunch of Xmas wrap-related items a few year before when I local store went out of business. Everything was 75% off and I kind of went crazy (I just used the last of the wrapping LAST YEAR). So, I began rummaging through the tiny garage and looking through the stuff to see if I could make some things to hang on the tree. I had bought a TON of curling ribbon and lots of hooks.

I went to town making ornaments and braiding it for garland. I curled, straightened, and manipulated, covering that tree. I found some packages of discounted light strings and put those on it too weaving more curling ribbon. The tree was stunning when I was done and out of all the trees I have had over the years, that one was by far my favorite. I wish I had taken a picture of it. No camera phones in those days.

Then, on Christmas Eve, I get a phone call from my Dad. He would like to come over and play Santa Claus and bring presents for Daughter. Huh? My Dad? The one who believes Christmas is pagan and whose religious beliefs forbid it? The Dad that flew into a rage when my sister and I envied the holiday celebrations of other families? The grandfather who can't be bothered to see his granddaughter during her arduous chemotherapy?

Sure, come on over.

*Boy, did he ever. Carrying a karaoke machine singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" with a big bag of presents swung over his shoulder dressed in full Santa Claus regalia. Needless to say, I was stunned, yet delighted for Daughter who wasn't sure what to make of the whole spectacle. I played along and Daughter got tons of loot. To this day, I don't know why he did it and I certainly knew not to ask then, but it was one time my Dad managed to bring some awesome into my life.

 

[Dixies_fire]

Dazed and confused- maybe your dad and my dad are the same person lol. My dad died in 2011 on Christmas I never thought I would miss him. But sometimes I do.