10 Positive Acts of Kindness This Week: a Parking Lot at 2am, a Driving Test, and How a Teacher’s Compassion Still Brings the Most Worthy Happiness

I got a $50 parking ticket at work. I appealed it. Company said, “Not our problem.” City said, “Not our lot.” I paid it. 3 months later my colleague got the same ticket. She didn’t pay. Nothing happened. “Why did mine go to collections and hers didn’t?” Turns out my enemy is Mr. Joseph T., the building manager, the man I’d been feuding with since a thermostat argument the week before my ticket.

The collections letter came two weeks after I paid, in July. The lot is private, and he’s the only person in the building who deals with the company that runs it. Employees of the tenants can be put on a courtesy list, which voids a ticket automatically, before payment ever matters. My colleague asked him in August, so hers disappeared the day she got it.

I’d never asked him, since we weren’t speaking, and my company and the city had each sent me to the other because neither controls the lot. I’d asked the wrong two people. The collections letter had a separate cause. I’d mailed my check to the P.O. box printed on the ticket, which the lot company had closed when they moved offices. I never checked whether it cleared.

I walked into his office and put the letter on his desk. He read it, made one phone call, and the ticket and the fee were gone in five minutes. “You could have asked me in June,” he said. I said I’d been too stubborn. “Me too,” he said, and added my plate to the list.

At 16 I couldn’t read. I’d gotten through school by memorizing what people said and copying my neighbor. I wanted a driver’s license more than I wanted anything, and the written test was forty questions I couldn’t read. My English teacher, Ms. Julie, figured it out by October. She told nobody. She said, “Stay after, I need help carrying books.”

There were no books to carry. She’d checked out the state driver’s manual and a stack of picture books, and for six months, four afternoons a week, we sat at the back table while I sounded out “yield,” “merge” and “right of way.” I passed the written test with an 88. She was waiting in the parking lot when I held up the paper. She put both hands over her face.

My son Hector started third grade a week after we arrived from Guatemala, with almost no English. His teacher, Mr. Brennan, learned to say “buenos días, señora Castillo” and “gracias por venir,” and wrote them on the back of his hand in ballpoint so he wouldn’t forget at pickup. His accent was terrible. I laughed out loud the first Friday when he said “hasta luego,” and then I saw his face and stopped. He was trying so hard. “It’s perfect,” I told him. By Christmas he was saying my last name right. It was the first time anyone at an American school did. Mateo told me Mr. Brennan had asked him for flash cards.

I showed up late to check in for a flight and had never flown this particular airline before and when they told me I would have to get on a new flight, I had a panic attack right in the middle of the airport. And they told me they couldn’t schedule me on a new flight because I cut in line because I was freaking out so bad and they tried to make me go to the end of this really really long line.

Well the person right in front of this long line let me cut her as I was sobbing and couldn’t even explain the situation because of me hyperventilating. I was so grateful for her because I was completely at a loss of what to do in that situation. I ended up getting a new flight an hour after my original flight and everything worked out but I will always be thankful for that lady at the airport who let me cut her in line so I could reschedule my flight.

I froze at the top of a ridge trail in Colorado. I’d hiked up for the view without realizing how much I’d hate the last stretch of rock, and with my fear of heights I couldn’t make my feet move. A couple in their sixties stopped and sat down next to me like it was nothing. The wife talked about their grandkids for twenty minutes while her husband showed me where to put my hands, one step at a time. We climbed down together. At the bottom they bought me a cup of coffee and wouldn’t let me pay. I never got their names.

When I was little, my mom got sick enough that she couldn’t work, and the benefits office kept denying her claim for disability payments. We had to leave our rented house and move into a tiny apartment: my mom, my brother and me, living on $500 a month. When that ran out, her claim still hadn’t come through.

Our landlady, Mrs. Abernathy, told my mom to stop paying rent. She covered our utilities and bought groceries every week out of her own pocket, and she showed up every Sunday with a lasagna or a tuna casserole until the first check arrived. Even after that, my mom’s payments were only about $800 a month, so she charged us $30 in rent for the next three years. I don’t know where we’d have ended up without her.

Right after our son was born, my wife and I took him to a diner for breakfast. He slept through most of it, then woke up and started cooing at an older couple a few booths over, who thought it was the cutest thing. As we were leaving, they came over, asked how old he was, and told us about their own kids at that age. Then the husband put two twenties on our table and said, “Diapers.” We tried to give it back and he wouldn’t take it. We drove straight to the store and bought exactly $40 worth of diapers, which felt like the right thing to do.

I’d started going to a 24-hour gym at 2am because I was too embarrassed to be seen lifting during the day. I was 17, skinny, and sure everyone in there was stronger than me. One night after a set of squats, I walked out to the parking lot, and an older guy loading his truck next to my car said, “Hey, kid. I saw you in there the first night, months ago. You’ve come a long way.” I said thanks and sat in my car for a full minute before I started the engine. It was one hell of a confidence boost. I started going at noon after that.

A few months after my wife passed, I was a dad of four, ages 14 to 2, back at work full time and trying to find a new normal. She’d always been the cook. One Wednesday I got home late, the kids had a pile of homework, and nothing was planned for dinner. The doorbell rang, and it was Walt from two houses down, holding 2 rotisserie chickens and every side dish from the deli counter. “Figured you might want a night off from cooking,” he said, and walked back down the driveway before I could answer. We ate on the couch. Bless you, Walt. I’ll never forget that.