Strangers’ Small Acts That Changed Lives Forever: Stories That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity
Someday I hope to return to that dance and do it again.
She was my Uber passenger, my car was rear-ended by a hit and run driver. She bought me 10 piece Chicken McNuggets.
I was traveling around the US on my motorcycle and I stopped at this bar in South Dakota somewhere for a bite and this guy sat down next to me at the bar and we both drank a beer quietly beside each other before he struck up a conversation. He was super friendly and had a draw that I couldn’t place, sounded like an Okie. He was traveling around the country too in his helicopter, just flying around the country stopping and getting a beer here and there, same thing as me except I was on a bike. I found this super odd.
We chatted forever and got a flight of beers eventually trying pretty much all the beers they had on tap. The oddest part was that this guy could not get over that he had an electric rental car, a prius. Like he didn’t even know such things existed. So we went out to the parking lot and he showed me how quiet it was (prius’ had been around for a while at this point, it was not a new technology and I’d driven plenty of them at this point). He was amazed that it could drive and be completely quiet. I also found this odd considering the guy was flying around in a rotor seemly just for fun.
Anyway we parted ways and he was just so nice and happy he left me in a good mood for a couple days.
I gave a ride to a guy who came up to my work the day after New Years, it was getting dark, raining, and in the low 30s, I couldn’t let him walk the 5+ miles back to town. Usually we only get addicts and loonies out in the woods where I work. But Alan was different.
He’s a carpenter, from New York. Just a guy who’s heart lies on the road and doesn’t stay anywhere long. His phone had died and he couldn’t uber back to his hotel. Instead of the usual small talk he pressed right in asking “So what it is that defines you, what makes you, you.” and from there we talked about life, passions and focused on the bright points amidst the darkness of the previous year.
When I dropped him off he pulled out his wallet at my protest, but instead of cash handed me one of those little sayings that gets clipped to the end of teabags. The last few months have been extremely rough for me, between the phrase and the conversation, the whole experience was uplifting, somehow reassuring and a bit surreal.
“There is nothing like you, there was nothing like you, and there shall be nothing like you”.
A guy saw me pay my last two dollars for bus fare that wasn’t going where I needed to go and threw his bus pass out the window to me as they drove off.
I was walking my then puppy who is a Rottweiler. She was also giant for a puppy (50 lbs by 13 weeks). We had a hard time socializing her because she was nervous around people plus most people didn’t want to take the time to meet her because of her size and breed, although she’s really a big teddy bear. Anyways we walked past the fire station and one of the firemen was out with his dog. We were talking and my dog Osa was doing ‘air bites’ towards him (puppy thing not aggressive thing which not everyone gets). He had a glove on and just stuck his hand in her mouth as if to say ‘is this what you want?’ and she was so confused but kept the softest bite on his hand. (I wouldn’t have let him do that if I thought she would hurt him.) This stands out so much because my dog often gets discriminated by people. It felt great to meet a stranger who saw that my dog wasn’t being aggressive but was just being a goof ball puppy. She also loved him after that point.
I was waitressing at a local hibachi restaurant. I had recently gotten stood up by a guy from a dating app and I was having a pretty slow night. I was serving a single mother with two younger kids, and I had just taken their drink order, and after she thanked me, she looks me in the eyes and says, “You’re beautiful.” I immediately got flustered and thanked her, of course, and told her that this was something I really needed to hear. She continued to be encouraging and super nice the entire time I was waiting on her.
She left before I had the chance to say a proper goodbye to her. There were two receipts left on the table, which was odd because we only take one copy of it. The first one had a note on the back that said “I don’t know what you’re going through right now, but I meant what I said. You’re a great person, and you have a lot of light in you. Don’t let people dim it. xoxo”. On the actual receipt, she left a 50% tip. I never saw the woman again.
I know this is kinda cliché, but I’ve never had somebody go out of their way to be nice to me for no reason at all. It wasn’t like I was going to give her quicker service, since she was the only person in the restaurant. What she said meant the world to me at the time. I carry that receipt with me wherever I go.
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