Acts of kindness

TimBear

Just thought of something I did myself.

I was driving through my town when I saw an elderly man (probably later sixties, early seventies), on the floor slumped against a wall.

I pulled up just around the corner and went back to where he was and tried to speak to him and bring him round.

We were literally about fifty metres away from the local police/ambulance station but I didn't want to leave him so I called them and they came straight away.

Turns out they knew him well as he was just drunk and passed out and he'd done this often, but I would have felt awful if that wasn't the case (since I had no idea!) and something terrible had happened to him.

What was worse that this all happened in broadband daylight on a busy road, yet everyone else just drove past.

Horace

Some folks here will know that I have had a particularly horrible 12 months with my business failing and me running out of cash forcing me onto the dole. Thankfully life is now taking a turn for the better with help from my parents and friends - my parents are buying somewhere for me to live so that I am no longer crippled with rent payments.

Last August I met up with a fellow MSE-er who took me out for the day to forage for sloes in the fields where her horses were kept afterwards we sat in the stables drinking tea and eating homemade cake - me being given the box of cake to take home with me. I was probably at my lowest ebb then and she did wonders to cheer me up.

I had another act of kindness because I am still skint - another MSE-er knew that I am moving out of my flat into a new home next month and knew from the chats on her thread that I wanted some lime green cushions for my dark brown sofa as I intend to have lime green curtains. 4 gorgeous dark brown and lime green leaf patterned cushion covers arrived in the post today.:j

On Thursday when I was going into Birmingham, a blind man got on the bus and asked the driver for Corporation Street - we were miles from the city centre at the time. When the man asked loudly where we were I explained that we were in Smallbrook Queensway and that as I was getting off at Corporation Street myself that I would assist him. I asked him where he wanted to go and he said New Street Station - I knew that he didnt need to go all the way to Corporation Street so got off the bus with him at Smallbrook Queensway and walked into the station - I took him all the way to the Customer Services desk and ensured that he was ok before leaving him to attend to my own business in a different part of town.

SunFlower

Great thread, but it has not been a Random Act of Kindness that has kept me reading it and not doing my skoolwork instead!

I've been lucky enough to receive a few RAOKs in my time, and try to pay them forward.

A few months ago, I found an iPhone in my college car park (it was a black phone, and at night as I study part-time in the evening). I spent a fair amount of time finding out who it belonged to (turned out to be a tutor) and I returned it to her, as I know what a nightmare it is to lose a phone. Unfortunately, the person who found my lost phone (also a nice make) a few weeks later in a large shopping centre doesn't subscribe to that theory, but you can't win them all...

Quite a few years ago my dad once lost his mobile and it was found by 2 young lads. My mum rang the phone once she was aware that it was lost, and they initially didn’t answer and were a bit cagey when they eventually did (part fear, I think – they can’t have been more than 11). This mobile has all my dad’s work contacts on and for him it would have been like losing a limb, even though the phone was pretty pants, so mum got them to tell her where they were, and then went to collect the phone and gave them £20 each ‘to show you that being honest will get you further in life than not being honest.’ I can just imagine the looks on their faces!

Also, my parents are pretty great in the RAOK department: I came home one day to find the contents of half a butchers shop in the kitchen in the middle of being packed into freezer bags by my mum and dad. It was not uncommon to see this as they sometimes used to visit farms to stock up our chest freezer with meat, but our freezer was full at the time. They said that they were doing it for a friend of dad’s at work: he was in the middle of selling his old house and had just moved into a new one, but the buyers for the old house had fallen through at the last minute so he was having a tough time at that time paying two mortgages until the second one sold. They put the packed meat into boxes in the cool shed until the morning, when dad drove to work with them. There was a huge amount of meat there – nearly £400 or so. Needless to say, the friend was delighted.

But my all-time best ever RAOK story may well be this one: I was in China and a friend and I decided to take a day trip to a particular section of the Great Wall famed for being particularly authentic (some parts have been tarted up no end as the Chinese seem to think that’s what we want to see). We went, were driven hours to get there on a bus, and had a look round. We came back to the place several hours later, only to discover that the last bus of the day had inadvertently left much earlier than it should have, and we stood there worrying over what to do; it really was miles in the middle of nowhere, with just a very small shack to pay the entrance fee/buy a small nick-nack; there was no other way of getting back to civilisation, nowhere to stay and the grey skies looked as though they were about to deposit a deluge on us. We waited a few minutes, when in what can only be described as a pure Father Ted moment a single shaft of light broke through the grey sky onto the road in front of us, and a white minibus full of Chinese Christians randomly pulled up out of nowhere and came to a stop right on top of the shaft of light. The friend I was with – a very Christian girl – quickly hopped round and spoke to the driver/passengers, and upon learning that she was Christian, they were particularly delighted to offer us both a lift back to the city we had come from.

Inside the van and while chatting happily with the other passengers about all things Christian, my friend told me ‘God listens’. I could but agree…:rotfl: :A

hedgesparrow

All of mine seem to include broken cars. I've have never had the money for a truly reliable car!

A rover I owned years ago broke whilst going round a corner. The clutch went as I tried to change gear and all I could do was uselessly stop at the side of the busy road. I was feeling pretty stressed about how to move the car on my own when a passing lady suddenly organised it all! She started "collecting" poeple to help by shouting things like "hey, this girl needs help, you push her car" without giving them an option! By the time she had collected about four blokes, she and they helped me get my car down a side lane and into a car parking space so I could call the AA! I think she was wonderful, totally bossy but she did what I could never have done that day.

Another time I broke down in a very rural area and my mobile phone battery was dead. I was trying to get any passers by to stop so I could beg a use of their mobile phone. A lady stopped and although she didn't own a mobile she drove me to her house about four miles away so I could use the phone to ring the AA and work, made me a cup of coffee and told the AA to ring her house phone when they were 10 minutes away and she would drive me to my car. Sounds a bit dodgy going to a strangers house I know but I knew instantly that I could trust her. She made a very stressful morning much easier, and I remember that coffee and a nice chat in her kitchen with gratitude.

aneres

Great thread it's had me in tears more than once.

About 10 years ago I had an extra job in a local pub, I got a call off my lodger informing me we had been broken into. They had took stereo, tv, cd's pretty much everything and I wasn't insured. The next day a regular in the pub called with a bunch of flowers and a new cd player. My next shift at the pub they'd had a collection for me.

I was so touched by everyone's kindness.

funnythings

When i was 11-12 years old i had ran away from home i was living on the streets around North London in Tottenham sleeping anywhere and everywhere. One night i managed to get inside some private flats that had an intercom to get into this building. I made myself comfortable understairs where the prams and bikes were kept. A lady from one of the flats must of heard me and she came out of her flat to look and there she was standing over me looking at this scruffy. dirty and messy, young girl ,i think by this time i had been living on the streets for about 4-6 months, , anyway i asked her not to call the police, living on the streets for so long nothing feared me other than being caught by the police and being made to go home again. after a long talk i had not eaten a decent meal for a long time, she offered me something to eat her kind voice had put me at ease she offered a bath and a sofa to sleep on for the night. which i did take her offer. At that age you just didn't think about safety and being an emontional wreck starving hungry tried dirty I just didn't care enough about myself anymore. as the eveing went on I found out that she was a Hospital nurse and a gospel singer for the local Church. She really wanted to help me but i couldn't. I never saw her again and i never really thanked her.
I truly feel my angel was watching over me that night 32 years on and have never forgotten what this Nurse did for me and i never will.

chevalier

When I was a kid, i found someones wage packet in the street. We were REALLY skint at the time, but we still handed it in.

Found an engagement ring on the bus and handed it in.

But the most important one was when a man collapsed next to me. I asked the woman on the other side of me to wait with him, but she just left him:mad::mad:. Still I rung for the ambulance and stayed with him til the paramedics came.

He was ok in the end. And all this happened just before one of my end of year exams. How I passed it I will never know.

I just hope I will get some good karma back one day...
chev

ms_london

I think this is a lovely thread and great to be reminded that there are a lot of decent people out there!

When I was in my early twenties I ran off to Spain for a summer to escape my debts, I ended up finding a job but was staying in a hostel - a regular in the bar heard me tell his friends I was staying in a hostel, so he let me stay in his apartment, and moved out of the bedroom and took the couch for a month! To this day, I am appreciative of his help and always will be!

Looking forward to some random acts of kindness tomorrow xx

aneres

I've come across this website which is really good...

http://www.helpothers.org/index.php

snailmail

what lovely heart warming stories people have shared! i thought i'd share some of mine; nothing earth shattering, but sometimes it's the smallest things that make the biggest difference (and are what you rememeber the most)

a few days ago I was walking into town using the alley as a shortcut and when I got out the other side I saw an older man on a scooter, the wind whipped his spare hat out of his basket and into the road. He stopped and I could see him looking at it and see the cars coming so I told him i'd get it, waited for the cars to go and got his hat for him. We then had a little chat before he scootered off ahead of me:)

i also saw a lady struggling up some steps with a pushchair while her friend looked after a toddler and asked if i could help get the pushchair up. i get really annoyed when people ignore people struggling with pushchairs and the like. i always move for the elderly or pregnant women/people with pushchairs on the bus.

i purposely don't sit in those seats just in case, and still i've moved for people even though i'm in an akward seat at the back. it also annoys me when a whole bus full of people will just watch someone struggling with a baby and a folded pushchair.

i always help if it's needed. i can carry a pushchair out, though i've never been successful putting it up, it's beyond me!

at a gig I went to once I was in the moshpit and it got quite rowdy, I got separated from my friends and a girl in front of me fell down and people around us just left her there, trampling on her apart from me and this other guy who managed to pull her out from under every ones feet. she didn't look like she had broken bones, she was just shaken up and crying, one of the stewards came to her then and took her out of the pit. i always thought there was some kind of gig etiquette where everyone helps each other as you're alll there for the same thing, but it disappeared that day, in fact i remember getting out the pit myself and thinking i never wanted to go to a gig again! (i got over it with the help of a friend who loves music as much as me, and together we look out for each other and anyone else who might need help!)

Other people have been kind to me as well. I remember a young girl on the bus who had a family ticket asking if i wanted to make use of it and get on for free with her. she must have been a teenager, and i remember been surprised at how thoughtful she was...and nice!

years ago when i first started working in retail we were selling jellybean teddies (for those of you who know!) we had a buy one get one free on them and one lady just couldn't choose which one to get free and kept asking me what i liked. i told her the little brown bears were cute as they were so soft and looked old fashioned.

she decided to go with my suggestion, bought her jellybean toys...then gave me the old fashioned bear! i was so touched and it was such a lovely thoughtful gesture that even now, some ten years later it makes me feel warm inside and helps restore my faith in people. such a tiny little thing that she has probably forgotten about, but will stay with me forever:)

i went on my own to a toy convention a few years ago, and got talking to this lovely girl who'd dragged her friend along so she wouldn't have to go alone and the both of them made my day much better as I was feeling really awkward and isolated in the throng of all those people who seemed to know each other.

such small things, yet they can make big changes in your life or just uplift you slightly on an unhappy day and sometimes that's exactly what you need!

can't wait to read more acts of kindness