10 Real Stories of Human Connection: A Teen Who Used Sign Language, a Lonely Passenger on a Flight, and More

Clara (15) was flying with her mom when a flight attendant asked if anyone could help a blind and deaf passenger. She’d only studied ASL for a year. Still, she stepped in and began signing into his palm. She thought he needed water. But his actual request left her stunned.

He wanted someone to talk to.

The passenger, Tim Cook, 64, was traveling from Boston to Los Angeles after visiting his sister. Clara Daly was on the same Alaska Airlines flight with her mother, Jane, heading home to Calabasas, California.

Clara had learned sign language about a year earlier. She knelt beside Tim’s seat and communicated by signing into his hand. What started with basic questions turned into several conversations during the flight. Tim told her about losing his sight gradually, his years working as a traveling salesman, and his family. He also asked Clara what she wanted to do with her life.

She kept going back to sit with him.

Another passenger, Lynette Scribner, noticed the kindness and later wrote about it online. Clara’s mother said her daughter already volunteered at a retirement home and had been planning to help teach sign language to older people with hearing difficulties.

Tim later said Clara had made him happy and that he had been in a bad mood before she came over. The empathy mattered as much as the practical help because he had someone willing to stay and chat rather than only pass along a cup of water.

Clara did not seem to understand why the random act of kindness attracted so much attention.

To her, she had seen someone who needed company and sat down beside him.

I was 26 and working at a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My mom had started chemo that month, and every Thursday my sister took her to the hospital because I worked closing.

One week my sister called at 4:40.

Her car would not start.

I was already in uniform.

I remember standing beside the ice machine, trying to work out whether I could afford to lose the shift and whether Mom could get there alone.

Mateo, one of our cooks, asked what was wrong.

I told him.

He looked at the schedule and said, “Go.”

I reminded him he had opened that morning.

“I know.”

He stayed for the overtime anyway.

The manager moved me off the clock, Mateo finished both our closing jobs, and another server drove me to the hospital because my hands were shaking too badly to drive.

The next week I tried to buy Mateo dinner.

He asked for a cheeseburger and added, “Not the expensive one. I know what you make here.”

A few months later, when his daughter had a school recital during his shift, I covered for him.

He texted me a blurry photo from the auditorium at 7:13 p.m.

When my husband walked out, I told nobody at work.

I am from Pittsburgh, and I was raised to believe that personal disasters belong at home where decent people cannot see them.

Unfortunately, Denise worked beside me for 9 years and knew exactly how much food I normally brought to the hospital.

She noticed when I stopped bringing any.

The first container appeared in my locker on a night shift.

Lasagna.

No note.

I asked Denise if it was hers.

“No.”

It was absolutely hers.

Then came chicken and rice. Soup. A container of mashed potatoes big enough for a family reunion.

Eventually I told her to stop feeding me.

She said, “Then start eating.”

Denise was already doing overtime because we were short-staffed, and she still went home and cooked enough for me and my 8-year-old son.

I found out later that she had gone through a divorce years earlier and a neighbor had done the same thing for her.

That generosity lasted about 6 weeks.

Then one night I brought in baked ziti and put half in Denise’s locker.

She opened it, looked over at me, and said, “Finally.”

I was having to use an EBT card for groceries and had missed the renewal notice, I was at the checkout like when I realized it was zero and I was stunned/embarrassed, just as I was starting to hand the cart of items to the employee, the cashier said the guy behind me in line was gonna pay for my cart (around $105 and some change) he was wearing a work shirt that indicated he was an airport employee. He only asked that I pay the kindness forward when I could. And his reason for having gone into that store? He was there to get his wife flowers on his way home, just because.

My name is Carla, and at 31 I knew exactly 3 things about cars:

1. They require gas.
2. Warning lights are bad.
3. Repairs always happen before payday.

My car stopped outside my office in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

A coworker gave me the number of her mechanic, Luis.

He came after his shop closed, got the car started, and told me to follow him back to the garage.

By then it was nearly 8 p.m.

He found a bad alternator connection, fixed it, and said I could settle the bill after payday.

I asked how much.

“Later.”

Later turned out to mean never.

I called twice. He kept saying the repair had taken him 20 minutes.

It had not.

A month later, Luis’s wife came into the nonprofit where I worked. She was trying to fill out paperwork for a housing program and was struggling with the forms.

I recognized the surname.

I spent my lunch break helping her finish everything and copied the documents she needed.

Luis came by the next morning.

He put a coffee on my desk.

“So now we’re even.”

I told him his car repair had involved compassion and mine involved a printer.

He said printers are worse than cars.

I was 20 and my tire exploded (and I mean EXPLODED) on the highway. I pulled over and tried to change the tire to a spare. 3 bolts were rusted on and impossible to turn. After realizing my efforts were in vain, I called AAA- they said they were on their way. I waited and waited and after 3 hours of trying to call them back with no answer, it was clear no one was coming.

So there I was, a 20 year old woman, alone on the highway. I had used the last of my phone battery calling AAA and didn’t have a charger with me. I was miles from the next exit and absolutely terrified.

After what felt like forever, a car pulled over about 1/4 mile down and slowly backed up in the breakdown lane until it reached where I was. An old man in paint-stained overalls got out and walked over to my car. I rolled down my window and he asked if he could help. I told him the bolts were rusted on and he proceeded to lie down on the busy highway and donkey-kick the wheel until it popped off. There were a couple bolts that had come off with the wheel, but a few stayed. He silently changed my tire and loaded the dud into my trunk.

I tried to pay him, but he refused. He said “I don’t want any money, but my name is John, I hope you’ll remember it.” Then he got in his car and left.

I think of John often.

I was 22, working inventory at a hardware store outside Columbus, Ohio, and pretending everything was fine.

It was not fine.

My roommate had disappeared halfway through the lease. I could cover rent or my car payment that month, not both.

For about a week, I slept in my car after late shifts. On cold nights I came back inside after everyone left and slept on the old couch in the break room.

My supervisor, Angela, caught me at 5:30 one morning.

This was the conversation:

“Are you living here?”

“No.”

“Chris.”

“Temporarily.”

She sat down.

“How temporarily?”

That was when I finally told her.

Angela did not offer me her house. We barely knew each other and that would have been strange. She did something more useful.

She moved me onto overtime inventory shifts for the next month, got payroll to release one missed mileage reimbursement, and connected me with an employee emergency fund I did not know existed.

A coworker named Devon also started leaving breakfast in the fridge when we worked mornings.

Within 5 weeks I had enough for the deposit on a cheaper room.

On my last night sleeping in the car, Angela knocked on the window at the end of her shift and handed me a paper bag.

Inside was a breakfast burrito and a keychain shaped like a tiny hammer.

I still have the hammer.

My daughter Maya has food allergies, so birthday parties used to involve negotiations.

At school in Raleigh, North Carolina, I usually sent a safe snack in her backpack whenever somebody’s birthday was coming up.

Her teacher, Mrs. Greene, noticed.

Near the end of the year, it was Maya’s birthday.

I had planned to bring something for the class after lunch.

Mrs. Greene called that morning.

“You don’t need to bring anything.”

She had already ordered cupcakes from a bakery that could accommodate Maya’s allergies. Every child would eat the same thing.

I told her she did not need to spend her own money.

“I know.”

That irritated me because it ended the argument.

When I arrived for pickup, Maya had blue icing on her nose and was carrying a paper crown.

Months later, Mrs. Greene had surgery and was away from school. The parents organized meal deliveries, and Maya insisted we sign up twice.

We brought soup the first time.

The second time, Maya chose cupcakes.

Mrs. Greene sent back a photo of one on a plate beside her hospital bracelet.

I was at a grocery store with my toddler and they were having a rough time.

Crying, over tired, likely hungry, trying to climb out repeatedly. It was a rough day, on very little sleep, after a rough few weeks in my life.

I didn’t think anyone noticed how much I was struggling.

I considered just abandoning my cart because I was so exhausted but I didn’t want to put more work on the cashiers, or have them waste the meat that was in my cart.

I finally finish (huge store and a long list) and get to my car and a woman comes up to me and hands me a bouquet of flowers.

Tells me she can see I’m struggling but that she can tell I’m a great mom and she hopes it gets easier. My entire mood shifted immediately.

I still tear up when I think about it.

I even dried some of the flowers and keep them as a reminder.

I think about her and pray for her to this day. Just wanted to encourage anyone that if they get the feeling to do a small act of kindness for someone,

Please don’t feel awkward or embarrassed. Someone could really need it.

My 7-year-old came home from school knowing sign language nobody had taught her.

At first, I thought it was cute. She would spell little things with her fingers at dinner and giggle when I tried to copy her.

Then I noticed something strange.

Whenever my boyfriend walked into the room, she made the same phrase with her hands.

Every single time.

I asked her what it meant, but she just shrugged and said, “It’s for him.”

After a few days, I recorded her doing it and showed the video to an interpreter I knew through work.

Her expression changed immediately.

“She’s saying, ‘Don’t let him leave without saying thank you.’”

I stared at her.

Then the interpreter watched the clip again and explained that my daughter’s signs were clumsy because she had learned them from another child at school.

That night, I finally asked her what was going on.

A new girl in her class, Emma, was deaf. My daughter had been sitting with her at lunch and learning a few signs so Emma would have someone to talk to.

A week earlier, my boyfriend had stopped by the school after work because I had forgotten my daughter’s backpack. On his way out, he noticed Emma struggling to carry a large art project while everyone rushed past her.

He carried it all the way to her mother’s car.

Apparently Emma had told my daughter the next day that she wanted to thank “the tall man,” but she had been too shy to do it herself.

So my daughter decided she would remind him for her.

The next afternoon, Emma came over for a playdate. The moment my boyfriend walked through the door, my daughter grabbed her friend’s hand.

Emma signed something.

This time, my daughter translated.

“She says thank you for helping her with her project.”

My boyfriend smiled, crouched down, and asked my daughter how to sign, “You’re welcome.”

She spent the next ten minutes teaching him.